Bega Cheese is an Australian diversified food company with manufacturing sites in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Founded as an agricultural cooperative in the town of Bega, New South Wales by their dairy suppliers, it became a public company in 2011 when it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
Close to half of shares publicly traded are still held by Bega’s farmer-suppliers. It is currently one of the largest companies in the dairy sector in Australia, with a FY2018 base milk supply of approximately 750 million litres.
Over half of Bega Cheese’s revenue (as of 2019) comes from their spreads, dairy consumer packaged goods and other grocery products, with their flagship “Bega” brand holding 15.7% of the Australian retail cheese market.
Bega Cheese’s other major consumer and foodservice packaged goods brands are “Vegemite”, “Farmers Table”, “Zoosh”, “Picky Picky”, “Tatura” and “Dairymont”.
The “Bega” branded Australia retail and foodservice cheese products are distributed by Fonterra under a long-term agreement. Just under a third of Bega Cheese’s revenue (as of 2019) was from exports.
The cheese products are exported to 40 countries around the world and distributed across Australia where they are available in most supermarkets and general stores.
Their other major business segments include bulk “core dairy ingredients” such as cheese, cream cheese and powdered milk (making up approximately 35% of their revenue) and “nutritional products” produced under the Bega Bionutrients brand (such as lactoferrin and milk protein concentrate),[6] which make up around 9% of their revenue.
In September 2017, It was announced that Bega Cheese would be the sponsor for Mumbulla Foundation 2017 gala dinner.
In 2019 the company won a legal dispute with Kraft Heinz over the packaging of their peanut butter.
Traded as: ASX: BGA
Industry: Dairy, Food processing
Founded: 1899
Headquarters: Bega, New South Wales, Australia
Website: https://www.begacheese.com.au/