Western Star holds firm at 100

Western Star has reached 100 with a narrow butter and spreads focus, a single regional factory and a new French owner. Its marketing team says the brand’s market position has never been stronger, even as cheaper imported dairy pushes onto supermarket shelves.

Western Star turns 100 this year in a dairy market that has seen processors collapse, change hands and retreat from regions. The brand has outlasted most of that by doing one thing.

Lactalis-Mainland Dairy Group Marketing Manager, Laura Blewitt, told Food & Drink Business the brand’s position was stronger than it had ever been.

“We are not dairy generalists, we focus solely on butter and spreads,” Blewitt said.

According to the company, Western Star is Australia’s number one chilled spreads brand with a pack sold every second and nearly one in two households buying its products each year.

Source: Lactalis-Mainland Dairy; Warrnambool Standard.

One factory, one town

The brand was registered in 1926 and is made at Cobden in Victoria’s Western District, home to the first co-operative butter factory in the southern hemisphere, established in 1888. The site produces butter, spreads, milk, cream and milk powder.

Blewitt said Cobden was central to the brand’s positioning.

“Really, what is at the heart of that brand is Cobden and the Western Districts of Victoria, which is really the dairy heartland, and that community that sits behind it,” she said.

Lactalis-Mainland is the largest employer in Cobden, with about 300 people working at the site and more than 1800 jobs supported across farming, transport, engineering and services.

To mark the centenary, the company held a community day at the site in early September. About 700 people attended, including staff, families, farmers, council members and local business owners, and 300 to 400 took hour-long factory tours led by site employees.

The brand has been named Australian Champion Butter eight times and won multiple gold medals at the 2026 Victorian and Australian Dairy Industry Association awards, including the trophy for Highest Scoring Consumer Pack Butter.

New owner, bigger portfolio

The centenary is the brand’s first major milestone under Lactalis, which completed its $3.69 billion acquisition of Fonterra’s consumer business, including Western Star, Mainland, Perfect Italiano and Anchor, on 2 April 2026.

The deal combines the former Fonterra cheese and butter staples with Lactalis Australia’s existing yoghurt and liquid milk businesses. The company said the integration is still under way, with the two sides learning how each operates.

The cheese side of the portfolio runs across several Victorian sites. Milk collected in Gippsland can be trucked to Stanhope in northern Victoria, made into 20-kilogram blocks and matured, then sent to Tullamarine to be cut, shredded and packed.

Lactalis has also been consolidating, having announced the closure of its Longwarry factory.

The next 100

Blewitt said brand strength gave shoppers a reason to stay when budgets tightened.

“In all of our qualitative groups with consumers they do play back to this really strong sense of loyalty to Australian dairy and a strong belief that Australian dairy is best,” she said.

“If they end up with a private label product at home that hasn’t been manufactured in Australia or potentially New Zealand, it’s come from the US, what we’ve seen recently is a fairly strong reaction to that. They can pick it. It’s a different colour. It’s a different flavour.

“When you are facing into these tougher times, consumers have a reason to pick up the product beyond just the products they’re seeing at the shelf,” she said.

“We don’t take it for granted. We are investing consistently in this brand, and as we look ahead to what the next 100 years look like, we’re very aware we can’t rest on our laurels.”

Lactalis-Mainland Dairy Oceania managing director, David Breckenridge, said few brands reached the milestone.

“Very few brands have the privilege of being part of Australian households for 100 years,” Breckenridge said.