France’s Yoplait and Tnuva, Israel’s largest agricultural producer and marketing cooperative, have reached an agreement for the exchange of know-how in production technologies and combined marketing of new products. Trade sources in Tel Aviv commented that the Yoplait-Tnuva agreement signifies a further involvement of foreign and multinational food companies in Israel’s food industries. Unilever, Danone and Nestlé have already established strategic partnerships with some of Israel’s leading food manufacturers.
Negotiations between Tnuva, listed among the top three Israeli businesses, and the French dairy concern, started some two years ago but failed to reach an agreement, mainly regarding the brand identity of the products to be produced by the cooperation with Tnuva. Yoplait, which is a subsidiary of French dairy cooperative Sodiaal, wanted the new products branded under its own brand and logo, whereas Tnuva wanted to maintain its popular local brand names. The compromise which led to signing the agreement last week was: co-branding.
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According to the agreement, Yoplait will furnish Tnuva with know-how in production technologies of cheeses, yogurts and luxury milk products, for which Tnuva will pay Yoplait royalties for the co-branded products.
