‘Moo is Moot’ but macadamia milk producer prepared for crackdown
Even the nut-based milk market is getting crowded with at least a handful of nut options available for consumers: almond — the nut market leader, hazelnuts, peanuts, cashews and macadamias — Australia’s native nut.
Morgan Roy from Jindilli Beverages said it would have little impact on their business if they were forced to drop ‘milk’ from their Milkadamia products.
“Hopefully it doesn’t make a big change to what we call our products, but if it does go that way, that we’re lucky enough to be able to adapt, and hopefully the dairy industry can adapt to new competitors,” Mr Roy said.
“We are from the macadamia industry and we’ve learnt to adapt our own products and go just not from making nuts but we’re making macadamia oil, now we’re making macadamia milk and we’re hopefully going to be branching out into butters and cheeses.
“If it was made that we have to change or not use the word milk, there are things that we’ve already put the pipeline to be able to make a quick change and continue as we are doing.”
But Mr Roy said that consumers should not be confused with what is actually in the Milkadamia product.
“All over our packaging, we mention it three or four times on our pack that it’s non-dairy,” he said.
Milkadamia is made from macadamias grown from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales and marketed as macadamia milk in Australia, Canada and also to its largest market, the United States.
Mr Roy is confident though that they could keep the product name if regulators cracked down on the use of ‘milk’ on labels.
“We’ve made up a name, a word — we’ve put two words together to make a brand new word which we have trademarked, so I don’t think we’re going to have to change the actual name of the brand,” he said.
“We may have to just change what we call it underneath, where we usually call it macadamia milk, but we might have to call it a macadamia beverage or macadamia milk alternative.”
He said it’s about allowing people to have other options to dairy products.
“I drink both, I drink dairy and I drink macadamia milk, it’s part of my balanced diet,” he said.
With a growing market in the States, Mr Roy is confident the Milkadamia brand will take off in Australia too.
“In the States we are available at most of the major retailers, we’re also in a lot of cafes and coffee shops, the estimate is that we’re in about 5,000 cafes, so we’re doing pretty good over there,” Mr Roy said.
“We’re alongside some of the new milks like cashew milk, hemp milk, there’s also peanut milk that has come out, so we’re doing very well in the States.
“And now we’re trying to gain more of a presence here in Australia where the macadamia is a native tree and hopefully getting similar results here in coming months.”
