Chobani is making sugar-free Greek yogourt, the first company in North American tapping into that market with nation-wide distribution. It will not be sold in Canada until sometime later.
When it launched from a plant in upper New York State in 2005, its Greek yogourt had 15 grams of sugar compared with competitors at 30 to 40 grams. Its products took off like a rocket.
Hamdi Ulukaya bought a plant Kraft Foods was closing at Edmeston, New York. By 2012 Chobani was the world’s leading producer of Greek yogourt and it opened a plant at Twin Falls, Idaho, after its plans to build near Kingston were thwarted by marketing board politics.
The company said each serving of Chobani Zero Sugar has 60 calories, uses only natural ingredients, is lactose-free and contains six live and active cultures including probiotics.
“This was a gap in our portfolio. It’s a segment we weren’t competing in directly,” Niel Sandfort, chief innovation officer at Chobani, said of the more than $1 billion diet and reduced sugar yogurt category.
“We have very high hopes that it’s going to not just take share, not just premiumize and trade up the consumer, but bring in new consumers who may have walked away from the yogurt set because of sugar.”
Sandfort said Chobani’s no-sugar offering was a “very challenging product” to develop and was subjected to the most amount of testing in the company’s history for a new launch.
He said competitors use artificial sweeteners to reduce sugar content, but there are “off-putting flavours” that Chobani avoids by using only natural ingredients.
The processing it developed starts by filtering milk and then fermentation.
