OUR STORY

Milk, exclusively from domestic mountain pastures

The products we produce at Mlekarna Planika are made exclusively from milk produced in the hilly areas of the municipalities of Tolmin, Kobarid, and Bovec, and partly also from the peripheral areas of the municipalities of Kanal, Nova Gorica, Cerkno, and Idrija, where livestock graze in the summer months, while during winter, the breeders feed it with quality fodder. In addition, we do not add any additives to our milk, as it is of high quality because of the above-mentioned factors and, above all, natural.

We preserve heritage and old recipes

The specialty of our products is that they are made of pasteurized, non-homogenized milk, without harmful microbes, while preserving all the important properties of raw milk. Our fresh, pasteurized, non-homogenized milk has a specific full taste, which is undoubtedly a result of nutrition, animal husbandry, and mountain regions of our buying area, where livestock graze in the summer months and are fed with high quality forage in the winter. We do not add any additives to our milk, as it is of high quality because of the above-mentioned factors and, above all, natural. In addition to cheeses with natural crust, raw butter, sour milk, kefir, sweet cream, and yogurts, we also produce sweet albumin cottage cheese, characterized by high protein content such as albumin and globulin.

Own production, shop, Cheese-making museum, and an open view farm

In addition to production, Mlekarna Planika also offers its own retail store.In the modern equipped store in Kobarid, Gregorčičeva ulica 32, in addition to all the products of Mlekarna Planika, you can also purchase all that you need for a modern household. In 2018, as a tourist and local landmark, we opened our open view ecological estate Bogata in Bovec, where we raise dairy cows. Our Cheese-making museum, which shows the heritage of mountain grazing and the tradition of cheese making in the Soča region, has been opened for several years.

Suddenly, a major problem arose with what to do with milk that was previously purchased by Kraš Planika.

In 1995, after the bankruptcy of Kraš Planika, the Tolmin Agricultural Cooperative established its own Mlekarna Planika

It rented a dairy plant from the bankruptcy administrator and started processing milk. 1995 was, we can say with certainty, a landmark year for agriculture in the Soča Valley.

The awareness that we must succeed because this is the only way we will be able to sustain milk production, because this is the only way for many farms and families to survive, because, last but not least, the valley will stay cultivated and the mountains in the Soča Valley alive, has helped us to persevere, to raise and come together again after each fall, proving that if we all work as one in a story called Planika, we can succeed.

In one single desire, to succeed, to buy all that was produced in the Soča Valley, to process and sell it as best we could, we were aware that we had to be different from other, established Slovenian dairies, that we had to respect the knowledge of our ancestors and the tradition of cheese-making, led to the decision to start doing what we know best in the newly established Mlekarna Planika.

Cheese makers have always been here, and this millennial cheese tradition has somehow marked all of us who, after 1995, have bravely undertaken rehabilitation of the dairy.