Morinaga Milk Expands Lactoferrin Production Capacity in German Subsidiary “MILEI GmbH”
28.10.2020 08:52:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Morinaga Milk Industry Co., Ltd. (TOKYO: 2264) (hereafter, “Morinaga Milk”) hereby announces that its subsidiary MILEI GmbH (hereafter, “MILEI”), which has the largest share* of the global market in terms of production volume of the functional ingredient lactoferrin, will increase more than double its production capacity with the aim to enhance its lactoferrin production.
* According to data for 2019 released by Absolute Reports
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201027006307/en/
Powdered lactoferrin (Photo: Morinaga Milk)
1. Overview
(1) Location: Kemptener Strasse 91, 88299 Leutkirch, Germany
(2) Product manufactured: Lactoferrin
(3) Total investment: EUR 15,000,000 (approx. JPY 1.8 billion*) * Assuming an exchange rate of 120 yen to one euro
(4) Production capacity: Approx. 170 tons (more than double that of fiscal 2019)
(5) Launch of operations: April 2021 (planned)
2. Background and purpose
As a functional ingredient for infant formula, supplements and other foods, the demand for lactoferrin has been growing particularly in Western countries and Asia.
Considering the increasing attention towards health and nutrition, the demand for lactoferrin as a functional ingredient with health value is expected to grow over the long term globally.
Morinaga Milk Group considers lactoferrin as an important functional ingredient to support people’s health and nutrition worldwide and has been conducting fundamental research and seeking commercial applications for over six decades.
Morinaga Milk Group is aiming to increase the sales of its own lactoferrin-related products with expanding production capacity in MILEI, and will flexibly respond to the long-term increasing demand of lactoferrin.
Having the largest production share of lactoferrin, Morinaga Milk Group will increase the production of MILEI and contribute to the well-being of people.
3. Effect on financial results
The investment will not affect financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021.
[Reference information]
MILEI GmbH
MILEI is based in the southern German city of Leutkirch, where its production facilities are located.
Founded in 1972, MILEI has a history of almost five decades since its start of production in 1975. MILEI offers lactoferrin, whey protein concentrate, lactose and other dairy ingredients mainly in Europe and Asia. Many companies, including global food manufacturers, use MILEI’s ingredients for infant formula, sports nutrition and others. Under the global strategy of Morinaga Milk, MILEI plays an important role supporting production and sales of ingredients for infant formula, supplements and others.
Lactoferrin
Present in most exocrine secretions such as breast milk and saliva of humans and other mammals, lactoferrin is a component with a wide range of physiological functions. The high amount of lactoferrin found in human breast milk, especially in colostrum, is considered to offer important and protective benefits to newborns.
Discovered by Danish scientists in 1939, lactoferrin as a remarkable functional ingredient, has been intensively researched by scientists worldwide, as shown by the increasing number of the studies in the graph (Figure 1). Paying high attention to the fact that lactoferrin is highly abundant in colostrum, Morinaga Milk has been focusing its research efforts on lactoferrin over the long term to develop infant formula that closely resembles breast milk. Since its initial publication of a research paper on lactoferrin in 1963, Morinaga Milk has been reporting its benefits through academic forums, conferences and publications.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201027006307/en/
Contact information
International Division, Morinaga Milk Industry Co., Ltd.
Yoshihiko Ushida
Tamami Shibata
TEL: +81-3-3798-0152
E-mail: interntl@morinagamilk.co.jp
https://www.morinagamilk.co.jp/english/
https://www.milei.de (MILEI GmbH Website)
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands21.10.2026 20:15:00 EEST | Press release
Octane AI, the quiz and zero-party data platform for Shopify brands, launched Phoenix in October, its biggest release to date. Merchants describe the quiz they want or upload what they already have, and Phoenix builds it, checks it, personalizes the results and keeps improving it with experiments. One beta customer turned a single document into a complete product-launch quiz: “I attached it to Phoenix, and it built the whole thing, all the pages. It understood everything, not just the text but the logic behind it.” Across all live Octane AI quizzes, 15% of shoppers who finish a quiz place an order. Yet building one has meant hours of writing rules by hand, custom code for design and clicking through every path to find broken results. Phoenix handles those hard parts, from building a quiz to improving it after launch. “Since day one, we've kept track of every piece of feedback from our merchants: what frustrates them and what they wish Octane AI could do. Phoenix is the result, and it k
Cognite Earns Corporate Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon Petroleum Corporation21.10.2026 20:06:00 EEST | Press release
Cognite today announced it has been named Corporate Supplier of the Year winner in Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s 11th Annual Supplier Recognition Awards. The Supplier Recognition Awards is a program sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corporation to honor suppliers that positively impacted the company’s business throughout the previous calendar year. “There’s a reason ‘Impact’ is one of Cognite’s most important core values,” said Girish Rishi, CEO of Cognite. “For us, the ultimate measure of our performance is delivering quantifiable value for our customers. From that perspective, the Corporate Supplier of the Year award from Marathon is particularly meaningful. Marathon Petroleum is an innovator, and to receive this recognition is a great honor to the Cognite community.” The Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon is the latest honor Cognite has received in 2026: In May, Cognite ranked 15th on CNBC’s Disruptor50 list, honoring venture-backed companies innovating across industries, exp
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. to Webcast Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion Presentations on November 4, 202621.10.2026 19:48:00 EEST | Press release
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) today announced that it will webcast presentations from its Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. The event will feature presentations from Stéphane de La Faverie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as members of the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and local leaders. The presentations will highlight the Company’s strategy and capabilities in China, Beauty Reimagined in action, and how China serves as a blueprint for deploying the Company’s global capabilities to drive sustainable growth and stronger profitability. Due to limited capacity, in-person attendance is by invitation only. Interested parties can access the live webcast on Wednesday, November 4th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. China Standard Time (12:00 a.m. ET) at Investors – The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. A replay of the webcast wi
Future Health and Bridge for Billions to Launch Programme Strengthening Health Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets21.10.2026 18:50:00 EEST | Press release
Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi and Bridge for Billions will launch a new entrepreneurship programme designed to strengthen promising health ventures in emerging markets and help locally-developed solutions reach more people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261021719421/en/ The first phase of the programme will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incubation to early-acceleration ventures in Africa and Asia. Emerging markets are home to significant health needs and entrepreneurial potential, yet many promising ventures can struggle to access the capital, specialist guidance, and health-system connections required to grow. WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2024 reported that Latin America and Africa together accounted for around 3% of global venture-capital deals in the first half of 2024, while venture-capital values fell by 19% in Asia-Pacific and 80% in Africa. At the same time, entrepre
Hephaestus Exits Stealth Having Raised $17.2M to Supply Rare-Earth-Free HTS Superconductors and Build Low-Cost Fusion Power21.10.2026 17:48:00 EEST | Press release
Hephaestus today emerged from stealth with solutions that address two of the largest cost drivers in fusion power: the high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and the edge-localized modes (ELMs – major plasma instabilities) that drive up the cost and complexity of conventional reactor designs. The company also announced the close of a new funding round led by CiRi Ventures. Hephaestus was founded in London in 2019 with a single mission – to help make fusion energy cheap enough to compete on the grid. Its AI plasma solver initially swept the full space of tokamak design parameters, unconstrained by the legacy designs and materials much of the industry is already committed to, and identified negative triangularity (NT), which inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, as the most likely configuration for low-cost fusion energy. Subsequent results from facilities worldwide, including the DIII-D, JET, and SMART, have shown that NT can deliver strong
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom