Romanian farm turns milk into astronaut-grade snacks

An idea born around the family dinner table has, after nearly five years of research and trial-and-error, morphed into one of the most inventive investments to hit Romania's food industry. In Miron Costin, Neamț County, the TCE Agricultură Group is turning out "Space Snacks" — cheese crisps and yoghurt bites made through freeze-drying, a process that locks in nearly all the nutritional value of the original food while ditching preservatives and other additives altogether.

The brains behind the venture is entrepreneur Mihai Tărâță, who runs the TCE Group, and the whole thing started, fittingly enough, at home. Together with his wife, Andreea Tărâță, he set out to create a healthy snack for kids — one that would put the milk from his own farm to good use, through a fully integrated supply chain.

"When our kids came along — mine and my colleagues' — we started looking for products that were as healthy as possible, with as few chemicals as we could manage. That's how we got the idea to try making a snack we could confidently hand to our own children," the entrepreneur says.

At first, the project looked like little more than a bold hunch. The group already had plenty of know-how in processing milk and meat, but turning those staples into natural snacks meant tracking down a technology that had nothing to do with standard food-industry methods.

The edge of a vertically integrated business: from field to finished product

For TCE Group, the new venture came with one major built-in advantage: every bit of raw material already came from its own farms.

Across roughly 6,700 hectares of cultivated land, the company grows the feed for its herd of over 1,100 Holstein cows, and the milk is processed at its own plant in Zănești.

That's where the Greek yoghurt and aged cheese are made before heading to the "Space Snacks" facility, where they're transformed into crisps and bites.

"We've been vertically integrating milk and meat production within the group for more than 26 years. We figured the next logical step was to add value to these products and build something entirely new," Mihai Tărâță explains.

According to process engineer Mădălina Donici, nearly all the ingredients come straight from the company's own farms, giving the product full traceability. "Our concept was simple: 100% natural products, with ingredients consumers can actually recognise and understand."

Nearly five years of trial and error to land on the right technology

The road to the finished product was anything but smooth. Mihai Tărâță says the team spent close to five years testing different methods before settling on freeze-drying.

The breakthrough came through a partnership with an American equipment manufacturer — the same company that builds machinery used to make food for astronauts.

"We needed a technology that could dry the product without wrecking the proteins, vitamins, fats and all the other nutritional qualities. Freeze-drying turned out to be the best solution."

So what exactly is freeze-drying?

Freeze-drying is a process that strips water out of a product at extremely low temperatures, under vacuum.

At the plant in Neamț, the cheese is first sliced into very thin pieces, then frozen at around -35°C for 24 hours.

From there, it goes into the freeze-dryer, where temperatures drop as low as -45°C and the water is removed through sublimation — without disturbing the food's structure.

"We don't cook the product, and we don't dehydrate it at high temperatures. We simply remove the water, and the original structure stays almost fully intact. If you rehydrate a slice of freeze-dried cheese, it goes back to nearly its original shape and size," the entrepreneur explains.

According to the plant's specialists, the process strips out roughly 97-98% of the moisture while preserving vitamins, proteins, fats and beneficial dairy cultures.

No preservatives, no artificial ingredients

The technology itself enforces a strict rule: recipes have to stay squeaky clean.

Mihai Tărâță says using preservatives or other additives would ruin the flavour once the product is freeze-dried.

"The process massively intensifies the flavour of the ingredients. If you threw in additives or other artificial substances, they'd end up overpowering everything and wreck the final taste. That's exactly why we stick to natural ingredients only."

As a result, the savoury crisps are made from 100% aged cheese, while the sweet snacks are made purely from Greek yoghurt, honey and freeze-dried fruit — no colourings, no fillers.

The secret to the flavour starts in the ageing room

Freeze-drying isn't the only thing behind the product's quality. Before it even reaches the snack factory, the cheese is aged for a minimum of 90 days.

"That's when it develops its distinctive flavour. We ran countless tests and found that snacks made from properly aged cheese have a much richer, more balanced taste," Mădălina Donici explains.

Once the water is removed, the concentration of nutrients shoots up significantly.

The cheese crisps, for instance, end up at around 50% protein — making them a seriously filling snack.

Space Snacks put to the test at the family playground

Before the products ever hit store shelves, they went through a rather unconventional testing phase.

The first bags were handed out to children at a playground run by Andreea Tărâță, Mihai Tărâță's wife.

The kids' reaction convinced him the project had legs.

"Every single one of them said it was crisps. When the parents explained they were actually eating yoghurt or cheese, the kids didn't believe them. That was exactly the reaction we were hoping for."

Today, the entrepreneur says, his own son heads off to school almost every day with a snack of cheese crisps and freeze-dried yoghurt bites.

"We've weaned him off regular crisps entirely. Every day, his lunchbox has a handful of cheese crisps and a handful of yoghurt-and-fruit bites."

Convincing shoppers that a natural product can last a year on the shelf

Even though the products have only been on retail shelves for a few months, consumer interest keeps climbing.

The biggest challenge, Mihai Tărâță says, isn't production — it's getting people to understand the concept.

Plenty of shoppers are stunned to learn that a mere 25-gram bag actually packs the equivalent of about 250 grams of cheese or 250 millilitres of yoghurt, with only the water taken out.

"People find it hard to believe the product can have a one-year shelf life without preservatives. But once they try it, most of them come back for more."

Demand is already running high enough that the company is gearing up to bring a second, higher-capacity freeze-dryer online — an investment that will double production.

From a family idea to a new blueprint for adding value to Romanian milk

For Mihai Tărâță, the "Space Snacks" project is about more than just launching a new product.

It's proof that Romanian milk can be turned into high-value products using modern technology and raw materials sourced straight from home-grown farms.

And while it all started with the simple wish to slip a healthier snack into his own kid's backpack, that same idea is now making its way onto store shelves across the country — proof that a family business can become a genuine model of innovation in Romania's food industry.