Kefir grows at record pace and overtakes low-fat yoghurt
Families with a greater focus on healthy food and a rapidly growing supply brought sales to 123 million euro (+28%) last year
3' min read
3' min read
The most disruptive phenomenon that has occurred in recent years in the world of food & beverage in Italy? It is the overwhelming affirmation of kefir, milk fermented with bacteria and yeasts, which has gone from being unknown to Italians to becoming a must in their shopping trolley. In the last year alone sales in modern distribution increased by 25% in volume and 28% in value, exceeding 43 million kg and 123 million euro (source: NielsenIQ).
Kefir has been advancing in double figures for five years. An escalation that has led it to surpass low-fat yoghurt in market size and to 'eat up' almost a quarter of the expenditure allocated to the purchase of functional yoghurt. Compared to which, however, it is growing six times faster. And even more if only the flavoured versions are considered, which in 12 months increased sales by 35% in value and 33% in volume.
Italy is not an isolated case since kefir is a world ttrend, with a market valued at $2.8 billion and expected to grow at a Cagr of more than 6.3% until 2032, reveals a report by Global Market Insights, driven by the search for products with greater health value. "The success of kefir is in line with the growing search for wellbeing expressed by Italian families," comments Alessandra Cuomo, sales manager of NielsenIQ, "and the development of the market is more pronounced in modern distribution than in the discount channel, where it is nonetheless growing at double-digit rates and has exceeded 27 million euro sell-out.
Also fuelling demand was the rapidly expanding supply, which filled supermarket shelves with bottles and jars of kefir. Whether in a liquid drink or creamy spoon version, white or in flavours, made from goat's or cow's milk, enriched with vitamins and minerals or collagen, or combined with granola in snack variants, kefir has colonised the supermarket yoghurt shelf and has gone even further, arriving in ice-cream freezers and dessert mixes. So many proposals, so many competitors: from Danone with Activia to Granarolo with Yomo, from Lnf Italia with I Love Kefir to Latteria Merano with Bella Vita, through to private labels such as Coop and Esselunga.
In spite of the many competitors, the kefir market in Italy is very concentrated: 53.5% is in the hands of Latteria Nöm with the Milk brand, while the first three pursuers Nestlé, Danone and Müller together achieve a 14.1% share.
"We were the first to believe in kefir and to introduce it in Italy at the beginning of 2011 and we are still the leader not only in terms of market share and growth rate but above all in terms of innovation rate," says Bernhard Tschurtschenthaler, CEO of Latteria Nöm, a subsidiary of the Austrian group of the same name. In the first seven months of 2025, our kefir sales increased by 51 per cent to EUR 60 million, and our goal now is to close the year with EUR 260 million in sales compared to EUR 218 million in 2024'.
