From a state dairy on Rua Itambé.

Itambé began as a public answer to a milk shortage in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais. Portuguese Wikipedia records that in April 1945 the state government, then led by Benedito Valadares, opened the Usina Central de Leite, a central dairy on Rua Itambé that came under the state’s agriculture department and received, processed and distributed milk to the city’s population.

After the Second World War food was scarce across Brazil, and the central dairy could not meet the city’s needs. The state’s agriculture secretary called a meeting of milk producers and proposed a cooperative to take over the plant and raise output. On 10 November 1948, according to Portuguese Wikipedia, representatives of six cooperatives near Belo Horizonte and five farmers formed the Cooperativa Central dos Produtores de Leite, or CCPL, chaired by Alcides Teixeira França.

By 1950, the same source says, the cooperative was collecting more milk than the city could drink, which allowed it to make dairy products, and in 1951 it bought a factory in Sete Lagoas. The Itambé brand dates from this period. Portuguese Wikipedia, citing the Aurélio dictionary, says the word comes from Tupi and means “sharp stone”; the name also recalls the street where the central dairy stood and the Pico do Itambé, a peak near Serro and Santo Antônio do Itambé, a part of Minas Gerais known for its cheese. In 1957 the cooperative was renamed the Cooperativa Central dos Produtores Rurais de Minas Gerais, known as CCPR/Itambé.

Plants, products and a felt cow.

The cooperative grew through the 1960s. Portuguese Wikipedia lists the Usina Idio Ferreira Leal, known as the Usina do Anel, the purchase of the Usina da Vaquinha in Contagem and the start of a plant in Belo Horizonte, after which Itambé began selling its products in other Brazilian states. In July 2011, the newspaper Estado de Minas reported, the company opened a distribution centre in Pará de Minas and announced an expansion of its factory there.

By 2013 the brand’s business had been separated from the cooperative’s other activities. The Folha de S.Paulo reported in February that year that Itambé Alimentos had been created from the CCPR’s operating assets, liabilities and contracts for processing, distributing, marketing and selling dairy and chilled products, and that it then had five factories, four in Minas Gerais and one in Goiás. The cooperative, which the Folha described as the owner of the brand, kept a half share.

Itambé’s range is broad. In 2019 Estado de Minas put it at more than 160 items, among them milks, yogurts, requeijão — a soft, spreadable cheese — and doce de leite. The company’s website lists powdered and condensed milk, UHT milk, butter, cream, cheese, petit suisse, curds and desserts, along with sub-brands including Natural Milk, Nolac, Goody and Itambé Whey.

Its best-known character is a cow. The company’s own 60th-anniversary history, published in 2009 and cited by Portuguese Wikipedia, says the mascot dates from 1968, when the cooperative’s president, José Pereira Campos Filho, was given a spotted felt cow by Ídio F. Leal, a consultant on dairy equipment, and that the little cow — the vaquinha — went on to inspire Itambé’s institutional material, advertising, packaging and point-of-sale merchandising. We give that as the company’s account. Portuguese Wikipedia gives the brand’s slogan as “Leite é tudo” — “Milk is everything.”

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make food, and all of them come from Brazil: Sadia, Perdigão, Seara, Aurora, Bauducco, Marilan and Itambé. Brazilian food brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to cooperatives and names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a neighbourhood market to a national supermarket chain.

A food brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal or snack it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factories or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its food is actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From cooperative to Lactalis.

Itambé’s ownership changed repeatedly between 2013 and 2019. On 21 February 2013 the Folha de S.Paulo reported that Vigor Alimentos, a dairy company whose main market was the state of São Paulo, had bought 50% of Itambé, subject to approval by Brazil’s competition authority, CADE; Vigor said Itambé would give it access to Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro and add categories such as powdered milk, yogurts and requeijão.

In August 2017 Mexico’s Grupo Lala agreed to buy Vigor from the J&F group, and with it Vigor’s half of Itambé, Época Negócios reported. The cooperative had a right of first refusal. In a statement dated 20 September 2017, the CCPR said it had chosen to buy Vigor’s 50% stake in Itambé Alimentos on the same terms; Portuguese Wikipedia records that it then announced the sale of the whole company to the French dairy group Lactalis, and that Lala contested the sale in court. In February 2018, Estado de Minas reported, Itambé brought a lawsuit against Vigor.

The dispute ended in July 2019. On 10 July Estado de Minas reported that Lactalis had completed the purchase of 100% of Itambé from the CCPR, following an agreement between Lactalis and Lala. The deal included a ten-year milk-supply contract, renewable, with the cooperative’s producers in Minas Gerais and Goiás, and Lactalis’s Latin American president said the Itambé brand would be kept and the business would still be managed from Belo Horizonte. The paper listed its factories as Pará de Minas, Sete Lagoas, Guanhães and Uberlândia in Minas Gerais and Goiânia in Goiás. In Brazil, Lactalis also owns brands including Batavo, Elegê, Parmalat and Président, the same report said.

Its website gives the company’s address as Rua Itambé in Belo Horizonte — the street that, according to Portuguese Wikipedia, the brand’s name recalls. The cooperative also continues: in 2019 Estado de Minas described the CCPR as the country’s largest central of milk-collecting cooperatives, with about 5,000 producers in 32 cooperatives across Minas Gerais and Goiás.

For a design guide, Itambé shows how a regional cooperative’s brand can keep its name and its Belo Horizonte base through a change to multinational ownership. Compare Président, another Lactalis dairy brand, and Amul, a cooperative dairy brand in India. For this guide we use a dairy blue, a milk white and a pasture green with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Itambé’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.