About a year ago, whey protein prices were half or even less than half of what they are right now.
And even less than a handful of years ago those prices were even less, most producers were even struggling to educate consumers of how good Whey Proteins are and how much the average Human needs them, not just to develop muscle and achieve top performance in dierent sports, but also as a route to your own well being as we all grow wiser and older, specially after you turn 40 and most of the normal functions we did before, start to become more diicult to do and aches start showing up every were, faster than wrinkles in our faces.
Whey Protein demand started to pick up a few years ago, moving away from their initial niche in Baby formulas and driven basically by professional athletes, also lots of weekend athletes trying to emulate the professional ones or just enjoying physical activity and many more of not athletes at all, just regular people trying to maintain their body integrity, the ones looking for well being and healthy aging. Industry growth was adapting to that growing demand and didn’t noticed the revolution that started in 2017 until a few moths ago.
Back in the early 1990 when scientist identified GLP-1 (a natural gut hormone) and its capability to stimulate insulin, it was a great welcome for the diabetic community. Back in the late 2010 the Semiglutide boom started, oering a weekly dose for a significant weight loss and starting the 2020 the target grew to other treatments. But as the drugs got cheaper, demand grew even faster and also demand for Whey Proteins.
Why Whey Protein demand is increasing with the use of GLP-1 drugs? Because so far, studies show that between 25% to 40% of the weight loss among users is from lean muscle mass loss, so as you loose fat, your muscle mass also melts away reducing muscle quantity and function. Pushing users to demand more Alpha Albumin Proteins to rebuild the loss muscle mass and Alpha Lacto Albumin is a major ingredient of Whey Proteins.
Beginning 2026 the patents on Semiglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and other similar drugs) will expire in many countries around the Word, among them : China with about 10% of the obese World population, India with about 8% of the obese people, Brazil with about 5%, Turkey with over 2.5% of the World obese people. Those countries have together a bit over 25% of the world obese people and also have very active pharmaceutical industries able to generate cheap generic versions of any drug, specially one based in Semaglutide.
As per the World Obese Federation (an NGO) 20% of the world adults are obese and the way the World goes by 2030 half of adults will be obese, that is about 3 billion people. The World Health Organization claims that obese people in the world are about 1 in 8 adults. So roughly the amount of obese people in World right now is between 1 Billion to 1.04 Billion people and lets believe to make this exercise not too stressful that only 25% of them, the ones living in China, India, Brazil and Turkey will have access to a low price generic version of a GLP-1 drug, we are talking of about 250 Million people new potential users of weight loosing drugs by Q-2 2026 (pharmaceuticals will need Q-1 2026 to produce and pack the cheap generic versions if they are not doing them right now), all of them looking for Whey Proteins to save their muscle mass.
If we take into account that a regular daily whey protein dose is of about 35 grams, each person will be consuming about 1 kg per month in addition to the current demand x 12 months = 3 Billion kg of additional Whey Protein production might be needed by the end of 2026. We need more cows. And we also need more dairy companies seriously taking the challenge to build new Milk and Whey Protein Plants.
But we also need far more dierent sources of Proteins to help alleviate the huge tsunami demand for Proteins that the World will be facing starting by mid 2026. Fortunately Canada had a great crop and an additional 1 Million Tons of peas were produced and lots of it can be turned into proteins and also Chinese producers are picking up on Yeast Proteins being used right now to lower prices of retail packed whey proteins in many countries around the World.
But we have to recognize the World is a bit late in producing what a huge demand growing up very fast at the near horizon will request in a few more weeks, 2026 really looks like a year of crazy price increases for all types of proteins. If you are a protein packer, remember your problem will not be the protein price, your problem will be getting the inventory to remain in business.
By Jose Zlatar
Dairy Business Developer.
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