First of all, our company plans its business on a long-term horizon. PepsiCo announced its strategy “Performance with Purpose” to reach Product, People and Planet goals for 2025.

It means that we have already been working on expanding our new food products portfolio. We understand that competition will become tougher. Therefore reputation in the dairy market is very important to us. No compromises for PepsiCo when it comes to responsible attitude towards consumer, quality and safety of our products. It is very important for us how the consumer perceives our products.

Our plants have its own laboratories to control safety and quality of raw milk delivered from dairy farms. If we find the discrepancy of indicators with the normative values, we return the entire batch of milk to supplier. We control all stages of production as well as quality of each batch of finished products. I would add that PepsiCo’s requirements to both quality and safety of raw milk plus dairy products are higher than requirements set by Ukrainian legislation.

What is also important for the consumer apart from the quality is the sufficient shelf life. We provide it using a high quality of raw materials, modern equipment and technology as well as maintaining proper hygienic conditions of production. We spend big money for modern equipment. For example, centrifugal milk filtration with the use of separator-bactofuger allows to remove up to 98% of harmful microorganisms.

To guarantee safety and quality of our products we ensure proper conditions for the delivery and storage at salespoints. The company delivers its dairy products to the salespoint in the special refrigerators equipped with constant temperature monitoring devices. In our agreements with trading partners it is always indicated that they are obliged to strictly observe proper storage conditions.

In addition, delivery schedule to the salespoints is designed in a such way that our products are always available so that the consumer no need to look for them.

In Ukrainian dairy market there are many large international companies like ours, and also less powerful ones. The dairy trade in our country is carried out in a civilized way – through the supermarkets and shops, but also though the markets and just by street vendors. PepsiCo sees its role in promoting quality dairy products by providing unconditional guarantee of their products quality and safety and investing in modern production. We believe that quality and safety of products are the most convincing arguments for the consumer.

Ukrainian manufacturers have already started to consolidate its efforts to educate consumers. One of the examples is our joint with partners project “Three Dairy Products a Day”. During 4 years of its existence a number of information campaigns and initiatives were implemented, including the development of the http://3md.com.ua/ website and, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, methodological materials for milk lessons at junior and high school. This basic knowledge is now available for free on the website. We believe in the consolidated approach to problem solving, so we continue to support this project.

At the same time, I think that it would be good if our dairy industry as a whole was provided with a massive media support. I mean the involvement of truly independent experts, people which are not related to dairy industry but authoritative. For example, well known health care experts, people who cannot be suspected as biased. They could systematically bring to consumer the facts and evidence of dairy products usefulness, convince them to take care of their health and alert against the products usage of dubious origin. Those people who work in a dairy industry remember several campaigns of this kind. But in this case, I think we don’t need a situational campaign but a well-thought-out and balanced approach together with sustainable efforts. I’m sure our consumer is worth it.

PepsiCo will continue working hard to produce dairy products of high quality as well as tasty, diverse and safe.