Moo-ve aside cows, this M’sian brand aims to popularise buffalo dairy products instead

When thinking of dairy products, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it milk? Yoghurt? Cheese? Regardless, I’ll bet that you typically think of products that are made with cow’s milk.

Subverting expectations, though, L Dairy is a homegrown brand that makes use of buffalo milk to create artisanal dairy products. All of its items are locally sourced and made (one exception being the rennet). The ingredients are all Halal-certified as well, though L Dairy is still in the process of becoming halal-certified itself.

The brand is rather new, with its founders Miftakul Janah, Biren Mohan, and Matthew O’Shea having started researching the idea during the first MCO in 2020.

“As we looked into the market here, we discovered that there is a huge demand for high quality dairy products of all types in the Malaysian market, predominantly supplied by imports,” Matthew shared with Vulcan Post.

Yet, the founders believe this demand to be “insatiable” and that there was a mismatch of supply and demand in the market. They took this as an opportunity to enter the scene as a local producer.

“A big reason for our decision to get things going was that the market was definitely underserved by local producers,” Matthew reasoned. “We wanted to create a ‘made in Malaysia’ brand and product line that really had the quality that people were looking for and could only really find with imports.”

Working with farming partners, both smallholders and commercial ones, the L Dairy team quickly began to develop products and was officially ready to go by the end of 2020. The brand is currently the three founders’ full-time gig.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Matthew graduated with a Bachelor of Economics from Harvard University, a Master of Science in Finance from Northeastern University, and a Certificate in Global Strategy from Emlyon Business School.

So, not much to do with dairy. In fact, it was work in this field that brought him to Malaysia in the first place.

Before L Dairy, though, Matthew actually had some experience in the field, having worked on a similar but separate project in Laos called Laos Buffalo Dairy.

A social enterprise, Laos Buffalo Dairy’s aim was to improve rural prosperity, welfare, nutrition, and the health of the local population there, all through the focus of buffalo farming.

While the experience in Laos Buffalo Farming is certainly valuable, Malaysia poses a unique set of challenges such as competition with imported brands.

However, Malaysia also offers significant advantages, Matthew said, particularly in regards to the infrastructure.

So, you might believe that the ‘L’ in L Dairy stands for Laos. But actually, it’s also supposed to reference Langkawi, where the team initially wanted to be based in.

“Originally, we had planned a full ‘seed-to-plate’ adaptation of Laos Buffalo Dairy,” Matthew explained. “A significant part of that project is direct retail and F&B sales, and tourism, in addition to the farming and cheese production.

Since Langkawi is a tourist spot, the founders thought it’d be a natural fit. Unfortunately, the lockdowns of 2021 kept them from moving around, so they decided to continue developing the business and products in the Klang Valley area.

Moo-ve aside, cows
Yet, the question remains, why buffalo milk instead of cow’s milk? Cows are known to provide a higher yield of milk, which is why they tend to be the primary milk source in the dairy market.