As we boarded the bus for a new day, the air was filled with excitement, chatter echoing throughout the vehicle. Soon, this chatter died down to silence as everyone took a short nap, only to wake up to a city within a city. We had entered the massive La Serenisima plant, increasing the excitement of the group. As we walked in, we were greeted by our presenter Matia and all gathered to watch a video about the company and how it operates. You never realize how complicated the process for making milk is until you learn the process for making milk. Preparing milk differs from country to country, and in Argentina at Serenisima, it is very intricate.
There are a little under 4000 employees that work for a brand that is celebrating its 90th anniversary. La Serenisima was founded by Italian immigrants and began by selling only mozzarella and ricotta cheese until began buying milk from carts and expanded. Now, 25-30 new products on the market were created just in the last year. The brand is recognized in Argentina for not only milk, but a variety of other dairy products as well. It was so interesting to see many offerings of one single company. The distribution process begins at the dairy farm where quality standards are assessed by employees from La Serenisima and upheld by the people working on the farm. From there, tankers are used to transport the milk at a specific temperature to ensure it is cold. Lastly, classifying plants are used to measure the purity of the milk. The video was extremely informative, but the multitude of question and answer fueled the conversation and understanding. We learned much more about Argentine relationships with other countries, specifically in the context of dairy production. The presenter was extremely knowledgeable and really made us feel comfortable asking tough questions.
We were then taken on a tour of the plant where we were able to see the process live and up close. Watching the machines work so efficiently was so interesting. For example, the plant can package around 1,500 packages of ricotta cheese in one hour! I certainly had never seen a plant so clean and impressive. Our last stop was the cafeteria, where the company was kind enough to give us samples of chocolate milk, cream cheese, apple juice milk, yogurt, and dulce de leche.
It is crazy to think that what we were eating was created where we were sitting. This trip was great for broadening our mindsets about the scale of business in a country like Argentina. A learning experience such as this only comes once in a lifetime. On to our next adventure!
SIE 2020, Latin America 