Lacticínios Tirol has grown from 80 litres to 2m daily
Lacticínios Tirol’s daily milk intake has risen from 80 litres at its formation to more than 2m litres today, according to figures released by the company. The business was founded in Treze Tílias, in western Santa Catarina, and now operates facilities in Santa Catarina and Paraná.
The town was established by families from Austria’s Tyrol region who arrived during the economic crisis between the two world wars. According to Tirol, the immigrants became milk producers during the colony’s early years, and dairy farming developed into the municipality’s main economic activity before industrial processing began.
The industrial project started in 1974 under Johann Otto Küng, an Austrian priest with previous experience in milk production. He identified similarities between Santa Catarina’s terrain and climate and those of the region his family had left, according to the account of the company’s history.
Tirol opened a new plant in Treze Tílias in 2005. The facility used machinery imported from Sweden and Germany and introduced the company’s first powdered-milk production line.
The company now has three production sites: Treze Tílias and Pinhalzinho in Santa Catarina, and Ipiranga in Paraná. They are supplied by 21 collection points located across Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná. The Federation of Industries of Santa Catarina says Tirol is constructing another plant in Pinhalzinho to make powdered milk and milk protein. The project has an estimated cost of R$200m.
The town’s Tyrolean heritage also appears outside its dairy industry. A local tourism portal dates Treze Tílias’s wood-carving tradition to 1933, when colony founder Andreas Thaler commissioned his brother Georg Thaler to carve a nativity scene for the settlement’s first Christmas mass. The tradition was reinforced in 1935 by the arrival of Josef Moser, an artist trained at Munich’s Academy of Arts. Treze Tílias later received the title of Santa Catarina’s capital of wood sculptors and wood sculptures.
