Tara (Israel)
Encyclopedia
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
(co-op) in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
specializing in milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
and dairy product
Dairy product
Dairy products are generally defined as foods produced from cow's or domestic buffalo's milk. They are usually high-energy-yielding food products. A production plant for such processing is called a dairy or a dairy factory. Raw milk for processing comes mainly from cows, and, to a lesser extent,...
s. It is the leading private dairy producer in Israel and the second largest dairy processor after Tnuva
Tnuva
Tnuva, or Tenuvah, is a cooperative in Israel specializing in milk and dairy products. The 620 members of the cooperative are made up a large number of kibbutzim and moshavim in Israel...
.
Tara was created in 1942 by dairy farmers from the Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
neighbourhood of Nahalat Yitzhak
Nahalat Yitzhak
Nahalat Yitzhak is a neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel.-History:Nahalat Yitzhak was founded in 1925, east of the Ayalon River and the Ayalon Highway, by a group of Jews who came from Kaunas....
and the surrounding area, in order to unite under one organization that would represent them with regard to the British mandatory authorities and concentrated purchasing of fodder
Fodder
Fodder or animal feed is any agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock such as cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs. Most animal feed is from plants but some is of animal origin...
rations as well as selling the agricultural produce. The name apparently was decided by the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
clerk when the co-op representative came to register the firm did not have a name. A warehouse for fodder as well as a refrigeration
Refrigeration
Refrigeration is a process in which work is done to move heat from one location to another. This work is traditionally done by mechanical work, but can also be done by magnetism, laser or other means...
room to keep milk on the Shabbat
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
was built on a half-dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
(500 m²) plot of land. The increase in productivity as well as quantities of milk provided a surplus that led the co-op to begin producing cream
Cream
Cream is a dairy product that is composed of the higher-butterfat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization. In un-homogenized milk, over time, the lighter fat rises to the top. In the industrial production of cream this process is accelerated by using centrifuges called "separators"...
and cheese
Cheese
Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....
s.
With the establishment of the State of Israel, a dairy department was created in the new Ministry of Agriculture, and with it new regulations with regard to production including required pasteurization
Pasteurization
Pasteurization is a process of heating a food, usually liquid, to a specific temperature for a definite length of time, and then cooling it immediately. This process slows microbial growth in food...
, a standard 3.5% level of fat, and that dairy farmers work from concentrated areas and independently. This led to more dairy farmers to join from Giv'atayim
Giv'atayim
Giv'atayim is a city in Israel east of Tel Aviv. It is part of the metropolitan area known as Gush Dan. Givatayim was established in 1922 by pioneers of the Second Aliyah. It has a population of 53,000....
, Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...
, and Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...
as well as production expanding to hard cheeses.
At the beginning of the 1960s, during the period that Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. The fourth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces , he became a fighting symbol to the world of the new State of Israel...
was Minister of Agriculture
Agriculture Minister of Israel
The Agriculture Minister of Israel is the political head of the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and a relatively minor position in the Israeli cabinet. Since 1992 the full title of the position has been the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development , the Development Ministry having been...
, the government decided to change the zoning
Zoning
Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...
of the Nahalat Yitzhak neighbourhood from agricultural to urban-industrial. Subsequently, the local farmers were forced to move their enterprises elsewhere. The elimination of its main source of milk required Tara to purchase milk from new farmers as well as Tnuva.
Until the late 1990s, Tara was still run by representaives of the original owners. In 1997, it was decided to hire 'professional' management. In 2004, the Central Bottling Company Ltd., the local licensee of Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
, purchased the company for $39 million.
In 2006, Tara signed a licensing and know-how deal with Müller
Müller (company)
Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller is a multinational producer of dairy products, with a headquarters in Fischach in the German state of Bavaria. The group includes a number of companies operating under the Müller name, including the original Molkerei Alois Müller GmbH & Co. KG and Müller Dairy ...
of a European dairy product manufacturer based in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
As of 2006, Tara employs over 360 workers and produces about 135 million liter
Litér
- External links :*...
s of milk yearly, which is about 450,000 liters of milk daily on average , with a market share of 10-13%. Estimated revenues in 2005 were 500 million NIS, with a loss of about $10 million.
In August 2007, the Gilead Dairy owned by Tara, acquired Tzuriel Farm for under NIS 20 million. The 'Tzuriel Farm' dairy, specializing in hard-cheese, goat
Goat
The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...
-cheese
Cheese
Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....
s, and other semi-firm cheeses was established in 1986 and since 1999 has operated a unique line of soy-based products.