Dive Brief:

• A new report from Transparency Market Research forecasts that the global cheese market will grow to $118.44 billion by 2019, up from $72.5 billion in 2012. 
• The report — “Cheese (American, Italian, Hard, Soft, Fresh and Others) Market—Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 – 2019" — says the only thing holding back growth in the market are cheese's perishability and tight government regulations.
• The global market share for cheese in 2012 saw Italian cheese dominate with 40.5%, and fresh cheese and soft cheese are expected to grow at rates of around 7% due to their nutritional value. The U.S. and France are the largest markets for cheese, respectively.

Dive Insight:

The growth is being pegged both on interests in more nutritional cheese products and demand from the fast food sector — two very different sectors of growth, to say the least. That the U.S. is the largest market in the world for cheese comes as no surprise to us, as a Chilean friend in college once noted, Americans "put cheese on everything." Fonterra, Kraft, and others have already begun investing in and adjusting for this growth, but further growth is also expected to come from new opportunities in markets like Brazil, Italy, and Argentina.