Economic characteristics of sour cream production in small-scale dairy processors in Serbia

In Serbia small family households dominate in milk production, while large-scale capacity dairies dominate in milk processing. There are over 200 dairy processing plants, and currently they manufacture about 80% of all dairy products. In this race small-scale dairies are lagging behind. The aim of this paper is to investigate economic characteristics of processing milk into sour cream in small-scale dairy processors in Serbia. The research showed that the cost price of sour cream with a minimum of 20% milk fat is 68.96 RSD/kg. The largest share in total costs has costs of raw material accout for 44.11% and labor costs for 38.79%, while the remaining costs are packaging, transport and other overheads. In order for small-scale capacity dairies to compete with larger-scale capacity dairies, both in product quality and price, it is necessary to continuously monitor and minimize production costs.