Cheese snack cube flavours like Chocolate & Almond, Strawberry, Orange Yoghurt, Nacho and Milky Cheddar are being rolled out to tempt Asian consumers to eat more cheese.
Australia's Beston Pure Foods supplies cheddar and gouda which is used to make the Japanese-style cheese snack cubes.
They are reprocessed and flavoured with chocolate, fruits and nuts under the Kyubu brand in Thailand and Singapore.
The new Kyubu products hit the shelves through a retail supermarket chain in Thailand in July and in Singapore last month.
Beston Pure Foods general manager Daniel Raschella said the flavoured cheeses were designed to be a first introduction to cheese for people before encouraging them to try the more traditional cheese products.
He said Kyubu was developed specifically for the growing Asian market, particularly Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
“It’s a bridge for a period to allow people to get a feel for some of the cheeses we can make but also we want to use it as a platform to give people the experience of eating the natural cheeses we make as well,” Raschella said.
“We’re also very keen at the moment to move it into China and we’ve got a person on the ground in Vietnam who’s getting a lot of interest. We’re also talking to distributors in Cambodia and Malaysia.”
Raschella said the Asian cheese market was very commodity driven at the moment, meaning that a lot of cheese was going into processed products such as slices or cubes.
“What we’re trying to do is slowly move people away from full processed cheeses and back to natural to get more flavour,” he said.
“The market is so big – we’re not out to take the whole world, we’re out to find the pockets and the people who are interested in quality products.”
