With help from the U.S. Grains Council, Egyptians are finding commercially produced buffalo milk in their supermarkets, for the first time, creating health benefits and value for consumers and opportunities for increased U.S. grain exports to Egypt.

Only a few months ago, “there were no dairy processing companies producing buffalo’s milk for drinking,� said Dr. Hussein Soliman, USGC director in Egypt. “Commercial dairy processors are now processing buffalo’s milk and producing pasteurized or UHT buffalo milk and marketing it in the supermarkets. This only happened in the past two months.�

According to Dr. Soliman, there are two major dairy processing plants producing pasteurized buffalo’s milk and UHT buffalo’s milk in Egypt. UHT (ultra high temperature) is a commercial sterilization process that, in addition to sharply decreasing spoors in milk, also extends its shelf life by six to nine months, according to various estimates.

The Council has been successful in its effort to encourage “dairy processors now to produce value-added products from buffalo’s milk, and [it] will continue supporting the Egyptian Dairy Herd Improvement Unit (EDHIU) to explore the potentiality of this sector for milk production and grain usage,� he said.

The EDHIU, a quasi government livestock agency, is the lead organization with which the Council is working to help improve genetics in the buffalo dairy sector, a key factor in ramping up production. Improved genetics and the expansion of commercial production have opened and continue to expand opportunities for increasing the use of feed grains and co-products to obtain maximum productivity.

The successful continued expansion of the dairy buffalo sector depends on the further development of capacity through the establishment of milk collection centers, followed immediately by the establishment of commercial operations. Development of Egypt’s 4million head buffalo herd and the country’s dairy buffalo industry, could lead to the consumption of additional 1 million metric tons (39.4 million bushels) of corn in the next five years and double that over the next decade, experts say. Egypt is expected to utilize 4.8 to 5 million tons of coarse grains in 2010.