Protein, clean label and a phone camera

Cottage cheese is high in protein, low in fat and made from a short list of ingredients. That was always true. What changed is who is buying it and how they use it: a younger consumer who wants protein from whole food rather than powders and bars, who eats it sweet or savoury, cooks with it, and shares it. Recipe videos have done for cottage cheese what they did for Greek yoghurt a decade earlier.

The numbers follow. In the United States, cottage cheese sales reached 2 billion dollars in 2025, up 19 % in value and 14 % in volume in a year, according to Circana. The International Dairy Foods Association puts the growth at 20 % over five years, and CoBank describes the category as growing at double digits. In the United Kingdom, retailers report the same pattern as shoppers move away from ultra-processed foods. Forecasts for the global category point to growth of 4–6 % a year to 2030.

Plants are being converted – and capacity is the bottleneck

Growth of this kind meets a category that was not built for it. Much of the world's cottage cheese is still made in open vats, cut by hand and drained by shovel. Dairies are responding by converting capacity: in the USA, cooperatives have announced plants switching from cheddar and from fluid milk to cottage cheese, and the first closed-vat cottage cheese plant in the country started production in 2025 with two NDT vats. Across Europe, dairies that already make cottage cheese are adding vats and replacing open equipment.

Why the vat decides whether the growth pays

Cottage cheese is a high-margin chilled product, but the margin is made or lost in the vat. The curd is delicate: cut it unevenly, stir it too early or overheat it, and the fines and the fat leave with the whey. In an open vat that depends on the cheesemaker's hand, every day. In a closed, recipe-controlled vat it depends on the recipe – the same cut, the same temperature curve, the same grain, every batch.

That is why a closed line changes three numbers at once: yield per litre of milk, hours per batch and operators per line. At the US plant mentioned above, the vat cycle fell from 16 to 8 hours, throughput doubled and the same milk gave 10–15 % more cheese. The extra capacity was sold before the plant was finished.

Adding cottage cheese to a fresh-dairy plant

A dairy that already makes yoghurt, quark or kefir has most of what cottage cheese needs: milk and cream preparation, cold storage, chilled distribution and filling. Cottage cheese is sold fresh – no maturing, no ripening rooms. What is missing is the cottage cheese line: a closed vat, enclosed drainage, washing and cooling, and creaming. NDT delivers that as one system, from a single vat of 6,000 litres to a multi-vat plant, and the same vat also makes halloumi, grill cheese and fresh cheese when the market asks for them.

  • Start with one vat and an enclosed drainage conveyor; add vats and capacity later without replacing what you have
  • Run cottage cheese in the morning and halloumi or fresh cheese in the afternoon in the same closed vat
  • Put the yield, the cycle time and the capacity in the contract – and confirm them on your milk in commissioning

Sources: Circana retail data for the USA, 2025 (reported by The Consumer Daily, May 2026); International Dairy Foods Association and CoBank, quoted in Hoard's Dairyman, 2026; Tetra Pak / Statista category forecasts, 2025; FarmingUK on UK retail sales, 2025. Project figures from the public announcement of the US plant, 2025–26.