Can you call yourself a Malaysian if you’re oblivious about Dutch Lady? Their products are everywhere – from your neighbourhood convenience store to the largest shopping centre in Malaysia. It’s almost impossible to miss the brand when you’re doing your grocery shopping. Many of us grew up consuming and loving Dutch Lady products but how many actually know their story?
We’ve decided to shine the spotlight on one of the biggest brands in our country – Dutch Lady. The brand’s origin traces back to the year 1954 when Friesland Foods made its foray onto the Malay Peninsula. The company initially imported sweetened condensed milk from Holland and it was surprisingly popular among the locals. That’s when they decided to open up a local company in the country.
The company was then established in May 1963 in Petaling Jaya, which is the Dutch Lady main factory we know today but it used to go by a different name. The brand used to be known as Pacific Milk Industries (PMI)(Malaya) Sdn Bhd and the company was commissioned to produce sweetened condensed milk in a factory in Petaling Jaya, which then became FrieslandFoods’ first production facility outside the Netherlands. It is still operating to this day after 60 years.
In 1968, Pacific Milk Industries (PMI) made history by becoming the first dairy company to be listed on the stock exchanges in Kuala Lumpur as well as in Singapore. A few years have passed and the brand thought it was time for some changes, starting with the name. In 1975, PMI rebranded to Dutch Baby, a more catchy and cute name if you ask us. Along with the rebranding, the company released a new product called Dutch Baby Modified Baby Food, fitting for the brand’s new name.
For the next decade, Dutch Baby continued to grow with the selling of modified baby food as well as the manufacture of sterilised milk in plastic bottles in 1983. After 10 years since the last rebranding, it was time for another upgrade. In 1985, Dutch Baby was finally known as Dutch Lady Milk Industries or simply Dutch Lady, the brand we all know and love today. “The name was changed to reflect the company’s desire to offer products for every stage of life,” said Tarang Gupta, the company’s Kuala Lumpur-based managing director back in 2019 during an interview with South China Morning Post.
Dutch Lady held true to their new goal of producing more products for all ages as the brand introduced their first chilled products in 1986 and formulated milk powder for children in 1988. During the same year, the company acquired more land in order to expand their factory. Not much is known about what happened during the 90s so we can only assume that Dutch Lady continued to grow and gave customers the best quality products and services they could offer.
By the early 2000s, the brand had undergone another major change, mainly coming up with a new logo. The logo that was introduced in 2003, which featured a woman wearing a bonnet while carrying two buckets of milk, was the one that became the most recognisable. Truly an iconic representation of the brand’s name. Everything else seems to be smooth sailing for the company in the 2000s with the launches of new products and winning multiple awards such as the Putra Brand Awards 2019 (Gold), The Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2019 and the Marketing Excellence Awards Malaysia 2019.
Fast forward to the Covid-19 pandemic, many establishments struggled during this period so how did Dutch Lady cope with the hardships of that time? Unlike most companies, Dutch Lady was actually doing fine for the most part, or at least based on our findings. They even contributed more than 160,000 packs of various-flavoured milk for several organisations to help the stranded and less fortunate members of society (and frontline heroes) gain access to better nutrition during the Movement Control Order (MCO) back in 2019.
Even during a pandemic, Dutch Lady still performed well. As far as we know, there haven’t been any major setbacks apart from the supply chain disruption back in 2022 but even then, Dutch Lady managed to pull through and is still thriving to this day.
Sources: DutchLady, VulcanPost, JiwaSister, SCMP, NST
