Califia Farms CEO: 'Everybody's paying more for oats...'
Califia Farms is outperforming the plant-based milk category, claimed CEO Dave Ritterbush: “We’re one of the fastest growing [brands] in oatmilk, and we’re slightly above [the category] in almond milk, and growing slightly [whereas the overall almondmilk category was slightly down last year].
“In oatmilk, every brand is offering some level of differentiation, from clean label to price points to nutrition. So our core oatmilk product has about half the amount of sugar vs a lot of the other ones [4g sugar vs 7g for Oatly, for example], plus we have a no sugar version, a barista product and an oat and almond blend.”
Asked about supply chain issues, he said: “We were able to go all of 2021 with a customer service level of greater than 98% because of some planning we did with redundant manufacturing sites and our raw material contracts, although it’s come at a cost, so if we have to pay a premium to get a truck, we pay the premium.”
As for soaring oat prices, he said: “Oats are at a five year high, maybe an all-time high with the [2021] crop down almost 50% in Canada. There's enough for everyone globally, but costs have gone up as people have been sourcing from Europe. Everybody's paying more, so we have oats that are mostly from Canada, but we do have some European oats as well.”