The world’s largest food and beverage tradeshow returned to Cologne, Germany, this October. The show attracted more than 8,000 exhibitors from 110 countries – a record number – with 145,000 trade visitors from over 190 nations attending the 2025 event.
New for this year was Anuga Alternatives, a segment dedicated to alternative protein innovation, from meat to dairy alternatives; while artificial intelligence, gut health and sustainability dominated the seminar program.
The Dairy hall once again attracted an international showing – and below, you can find out how some of this year’s exhibitors are diversifying and innovating.
Meal replacement drink with real milk
Olympus Foods, brand of Hellenic Dairies SA, highlighted its new meal replacement product, Drink Eat. Made with semi-skimmed cow’s milk instead of protein powder, the product offers a cleaner formulation compared to alternatives and took about a year of R&D before it was launched this year.
Available in three flavors - Vanilla, Strawberry and Pistachio, a single ‘meal’ contains around 500 calories and packs 35g of protein and 26 vitamins and trace elements. It is low in sugar and lactose and comes in a 500ml RTD format.
The range is currently sold in Greece and on the Balkans and complements the brand’s functional dairy range, including protein yogurt and drinking yogurt offering and kefir.
“There is a huge rise in the protein category within all dairy, from yogurt to coffee,” Stylianos Dikopoulos of Hellenic Dairies SA, told us at the show. “We hope to get our share of the market in this category. As for meal replacements, we wanted to offer options to consumers. Our competitors offer similar products, but made only with protein powder.”
Dreamfarm’s plant-based fresh mozzarella
Dreamfarm’s Giovanni Menozzi tells us the company was founded in 2021 but it took them two years of R&D and a year of waiting to patent their formulation before they finally went to market in 2023. The company’s flagship product is a plant-based alternative to fresh mozzarella, which is made from locally-sourced almonds and cashews. Dreamfarm also offers semi-hard mozzarella for foodservice as well as ricotta and stracciatella alternatives and a soft plant-based cheese spread.
The fresh mozzarella’s nut base is naturally-fermented to achieve superior taste and functionality compared to cheese alternatives that rely on starches or plant fats, we were told. Thanks to the clean label – which also features vegetable fibers, salt, agar-agar, natural flavour, and lactic acid bacteria – the product has NutriScore A.
The price of the fresh mozzarella alternative – the majority of Dreamfarm’s products are sold in retail, with just 10% in foodservice – is more than double that of traditional dairy mozzarella, however, at €3.49 RRP for the plant-based product versus €1.50 for the dairy product.
Are foodservice providers interested in stocking the fresh product? “It’s not super easy,” the company’s Giovanni Menozzi told us, “because you work with distributors who have thousands of products in a catalogue for restaurants to choose from. So you need to educate [foodservice providers], explain why this product is different, why it can cover several need states; and why when you go out for dinner with vegans, they may ‘condition’ the rest of the group to pick a vegan meal.”
For now, the brand is stocked in all major retail chains in Italy as well as Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany and is coming to Monoprix in France.
‘First’ beer-flavored gouda
Holland cheese producer and exporter Daily Dairy presented what it claims to be ‘the first Dutch Gouda with actual beer as an ingredient’.
The cheese is made to traditional Dutch recipe, then beer from Utrecht brewery Paulus Abbey is added into the mix before the cheese is ripened for eight weeks. The result is a mature cheese with gentle saltiness that balances with the beer’s slightly bitter fruitiness.
Daily Dairy’s Manar Ibrahim told us it took almost a year for the two companies to get the recipe right. The cheese is made for export – specifically Asia and the US – and large quantities are already en route to those markets. “When products have a story, they work,” she told us.
Oatly for automatic coffee machines
Over at the Alternatives hall, Sweden’s Oatly presented its latest innovation – BaristaMatic, a barista-style plant-based milk formulated for use in automatic coffee machines.
Sporting the same taste as the original Barista edition, Oatly reformulated its drink to reduce sedimentation and make it suitable for use in automatic machines (excluding portafilter ones).
BaristaMatic’s use in hot drinks was demonstrated on stand with three different brands of automatic coffee machines. Available exclusively for foodservice, the plant-based drink comes in 1.5L shelf-stable pack, with six cartons sold in a single case. The product is available in Europe only.
Protein shake with real espresso
Finnish lactose-free cold coffee brand Frezza presented its latest innovation – a protein shake with coffee.
“We already produce cold coffee with real milk and real espresso and thought, why not add protein,” Frezza’s Timo Pajunen told us. “It’s also lactose-free and vitamin D-fortified. We offer it only as an RTD drink (250ml) at the moment. In other formats, we also have one-liter cartons, but the smaller formats seem to be working well.”
The protein shake packs 20g of protein per 100ml, is lactose-free and is Rainforest Alliance-certified.
Frezza also exhibited its Forte range of 1L cold coffee milk drinks, which includes ‘Double Trouble’ with a double shot of espresso for an extra kick.
Greek yogurt's growing appeal
Yogurt sales have been booming globally, with Greek yogurt producers including Kri Kri and Olympus Foods telling us at Anuga 2025 that exports of Greek yogurt and strained yogurt have skyrocketed in the past year.
"Across our European markets - the UK, Italy, Austria - sales have been growing," Kri Kri's Michalis Koronakis, senior export area sales manager, told us. "Especially strained yogurt - it combines the healthiness and the protein of Greek yogurt without the fat - and the protein is high naturally from the straining process. Also formats like flavored potted yogurt - with dessert flavors like tiramisu, or coffee - with low sugar that fits into the healthy snacking trend. And lactose-free is increasing, too, as there's no compromise on nutrition or flavor."
Is the company looking to enter new formats or categories, such as drinks or skyr? "This year, our yogurt exports will be 40% up. We used to grow 15%-20% per year, but this year, we are already about 40%. So we are focused on investing in what's stable, and then maybe we'll evaluate if there are opportunities down the line."
Pistachio plant-based milk alternatives
In line with one of 2025’s biggest taste trends, several manufacturers presented pistachio-based milk alternatives across Anuga.
Italian company Mand’or showcased Pistacchio, a plant-based drink that was featured on Anuga’s Innovation Gallery.
The shelf-stable drink packs nearly 5% pistachio content per carton as well as water, sugar, stabilisers, emulsifier, flavours and salt. It is made from roasted pistachios to deliver a stronger flavor and color naturally, and is suitable for use in hot drinks, according to the company.
Turkish plant-based dairy alternatives brand Fomilk also returned to Anuga with its range of plant-based milk alternatives and puddings, including a pistachio-based beverage that packs 3.5% of pistachio content.
Dairy and plant-based kefir innovations
Kefir is a high-growth segment in dairy in 2025, with water kefir and plant-based alternatives presenting as increasingly sought-after diversification niches for manufacturers.
Overall, yogurt beverages are one of the strongest growth categories globally this year thanks to their on-the-go nutritional appeal and gut health credentials. How are brands building on this momentum? Bioactive ingredient fortification, in addition to flavors and formats such as gut shots and yogurt pouches, have been the main innovations in recent times.
Across Anuga’s Dairy hall, there were plenty of examples of high-protein yogurt drinks - including this flavored drinking yogurt and kefir range from Poland’s Mlekpol brand Laciaty and its lactose-free functional dairy drinks that deliver ‘energy’, ‘harmony’ and ‘balance’.
Hellenic Dairies’ Olympus Foods also highlighted a range of high-protein kefir drinks. Packing up to 30g of protein (in the plain version) as well as beneficial gut bacteria Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, the refrigerated RTD product caters to a growing demand for functional beverages.
And Luxembourg dairy processor Luxlait highlighted a range of refrigerated flavored kefir in 500ml cartons.
There were also several dairy-free fermented drinks marketed as kefir - including Latvia’s Fermentful organic Plant Kefir made from green buckwheat. The drink is made by naturally fermenting buckwheat, which is naturally gluten-free and packed with polyphenols as well as copper, manganese, iron, and zinc.
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