Our Advantage
To us, the quality of our relationships matters just as much as the quality of our products and service.
We’ve been doing this for a long time, and every day we wake up thinking about how to apply our expertise, knowledge, and industry insights to help solve our customers’ unique challenges and deliver top-quality nutrition ingredients that empower their success.
We believe that every customer is a partner, and every challenge is an opportunity.
Humble Beginnings
Our story began in 1950 when Mike Leprino opened a small, family-owned, Italian grocery store in the Highlands neighborhood of Denver, on the same corner where our global headquarters exist today.
His foray into cheese-making began with ricotta before selling hand-made mozzarella to accommodate the rapidly growing pizza industry. Over the next 25 years, Leprino Foods continued expanding its mozzarella production, adding new products, streamlining operations, and eventually entering the international market.
By 1992, we became the #1 pizza cheese supplier in the U.S. and are now the world’s largest manufacturer of mozzarella cheese and lactose with an extensive global footprint and loyal base of cheese and nutrition customers.
The Leprino Family’s Journey
The Leprino family’s journey from Potenza, Italy to become the world’s largest mozzarella and lactose manufacturer in the world required overcoming challenges and finding new opportunities—laying the groundwork for what Leprino Nutrition is today. Watch this short documentary to learn more about the unique and heartwarming story of the Leprino Family business.
Words We Live by Every Day
“At Leprino Foods, we strive daily to be the world’s best dairy food and ingredient company, brought to fruition through our core values of quality, service, competitive price, and ethics—all things we know our customer partners appreciate and value.”
– JIM LEPRINO
A Natural Evolution
The Leprino Nutrition Global Business Unit
Over decades, Leprino Nutrition has grown into a top producer of the highest quality whey protein and dairy ingredients that are used across a variety of segments, brands, and nutrition categories around the globe. In 2021, the business took another big step – Leprino Nutrition split off from the Cheese business and became its own Global Business Unit.
With dedicated resources and full ownership of its business results, the Leprino Nutrition Global Business Unit will benefit from more resources, increased focus, better operational excellence, and faster innovation. Whether it’s investments in new technology, partnerships with new companies or simply innovating more with our current customer base, the Leprino Nutrition Global Business Unit is poised for accelerated growth on the top and bottom line.
Our Vision
We Are the Trusted Global Nutrition Solution – Purposefully Driven by Our People, Planet and Products to Inspire an Active and Healthy Lifestyle.
Our Mission
We Partner to Enrich the Global Nutrition Community by Empowering Brands with Exceptional Products and Service and Building Brands that Win.
What sets us apart
Trusted Products
We offer quality our customers can trust because of our high level of quality control at every step of the process. So, our partners can trust that our products deliver the nutritional benefits they rely on, day in and day out.
Global Scale
The right place and right time are essential parts of the nutrition supply chain, and our customers count on us to deliver quality ingredients at the volumes and competitive prices they need, anywhere around the globe.
Thoughtful Innovation
To us, innovation is more than research and development or keeping at the forefront of technology. To us, innovation is about the constant pursuit of what’s next and inventive product improvements. Here is where we apply our decades of experience to problem-solving for our customers.
Passionate Service
We love what we do, and it shows each day through our focus and attention to our customers which is our true point of differentiation in the industry. We are passionate about partnering with our customers to solve their unique challenges or to adapt our process to work with theirs.
Quality & Food Safety
As a leader in the dairy and nutrition ingredients industry, quality and food safety are a top priority. We invest millions of dollars each year in best-in-class food safety systems and designs and maintain an unwavering commitment to the highest safety standards and process control.
Our Global Footprint
- Our products are found in 79 countries across six of the seven continents, making our supply chain available for our partners all around the globe.
- We employ over 5,500 skilled, diverse, and passionate employees worldwide to help and support our partners whenever it’s needed.
- Our locations include our Denver-based corporate offices, 14 U.S. manufacturing facilities, four international manufacturing facilities, and sales offices in Asia. We are available across the globe to support our partners whenever they need it.
