Arla Foods, the European dairy co-operative, has launched Arla Professional as its new brand name to target business growth for its foodservice products in the UK.

Arla said the move will see the company’s existing cheese foodservice brands – ‘Lockerbie’, produced at the Arla site in Scotland and the ‘Bladen’ brand, with a focus on “British provenance” – brought under the Arla Professional umbrella.

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Kai Gyllström, global head of Arla Foodservice, said: “The UK is a pilot market for the Arla Professional brand and part of a bigger foodservice plan. The plan will capitalise on the strong positions we have in other markets to become even stronger in the markets with growth potential including the UK. Growing foodservice will provide a more significant contribution to utilising our significant milk pool and add further value to our owner’s milk.”

Arla said “bringing the Lockerbie and Bladen brands under the one banner is a significant step in the changing way the company reaches food and catering professionals”. 

Tomas Pietrangeli, managing director of Arla UK, said: “Now is the right time in the UK to step up our efforts into a relatively untapped area that provides significant growth opportunities that we need to capture. We hope the launch of Arla Professional changes the way the foodservice industry sees Arla, presenting one clear brand whilst continuing the strong reputation of quality they associated with the Lockerbie and Bladen names.”

Earlier this year, Arla Foods unveiled plans to grow revenue in the UK by nearly a third and make the firm a GBP400m (US$529m) household brand by 2020, in what it said was its “most ambitious business strategy to date”. Arla said it would position itself as “the champion of British dairy”.

In August, Arla Foods launched a line of “clean label” dairy-based ingredients for the foodservice sector. Arla Food Ingredients, the group’s foodservice unit, said it was introducing a number of products targeting restaurants and catering businesses under its “goodness of dairy” campaign.