Hochwald to purchase Tuffi brand from Müller

Dairy cooperative Hochwald is set to buy the Tuffi brand from Müller after securing the approval of Germany’s competition authority.

Müller committed to divesting Tuffi, which was included in its acquisition of part of FrieslandCampina’s German consumer business, in order to get the green light for that deal from the Federal Cartel Office.

The brand makes products including milk, milk-based drinks, kefir, buttermilk, curd and cream. Tuffi has a long history in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it was created to market the products of the Milchwerke Köln-Wuppertal dairy enterprise.

Detlef Latka, CEO of Hochwald, said: “For us, as a company structured as a cooperative, the acquisition of the regional brand Tuffi is a good opportunity to optimise our sales concept”.

He continued: “With our milk catchment area, we cover the states of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, with our regional brands now [spanning] the same area except for Hesse. This is how we ensure short distances from the milk supplier to the consumer.”

Müller is also granting Hochwald the licence to produce and sell rice pudding under the Landliebe brand – another prerequisite of competition authority approval for the deal with FrieslandCampina.