On April 9, 2026, the Beauvais campus welcomed a delegation from Lactalis France. The agenda included a tour of the educational facilities, discussions with students, and the signing of a three-year sponsorship agreement focused on training for the dairy industry.
The world's leading dairy group and a key player in the French dairy industry, Lactalis markets brands found in every household: Président, Lactel, and Galbani. The group employs thousands of people across France in specialized plants producing a wide variety of products: milk, cheese, butter, cream, and ultra-fresh products. Behind this diversity lies a constant need: to recruit and train engineers capable of mastering dairy processing.
On the other hand, UniLaSalle has been training agricultural and food engineers for over 170 years at its Beauvais campus. Since December 2024, the school has had a fully operational dairy workshop, integrated into an educational environment that combines a working farm, laboratories, and research facilities. This strong focus on life sciences makes UniLaSalle a natural partner for Lactalis.
The Beauvais campus welcomes Lactalis
This Thursday morning, Ms. Agnès Bizet, Director of Recruitment and Talent Development for France; Ms. Anne-Sophie David-Packer, Manager of University Relations and Pre-Recruitment; and Mr. Olivier Sainte-Beuve, Director of the Lactalis plant in Clermont, visited the Beauvais campus with a specific goal in mind: to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which UniLaSalle trains its engineers and to lay the groundwork for a training partnership focused on the dairy industry.
A farm and dairy workshop, operational since December 2024. FoodLab. Agroecologia exhibition space. The APEX platform, dedicated to digital technology and educational innovation. These spaces offer a concrete glimpse into how UniLaSalle trains its students, combining hands-on experience, experimentation, and research.
An agreement signed, a project launched
At the end of the visit, Philippe Choquet, CEO of UniLaSalle, signed the sponsorship agreement alongside the Lactalis delegation. This three-year commitment, spanning the 2025–2026 to 2027–2028 academic years, aims to jointly develop a training program tailored to the dairy industry.
Lactalis has committed to funding the program in terms of both academic and material resources, and will be able to engage directly with students in the classroom. UniLaSalle, for its part, is committed to delivering a coherent, progressive educational program grounded in the realities of the industry. This program is called “Dairy Processing”: a modular, certificate-granting track designed for food engineering students, which intensifies from the third to the fifth year of the engineering program.
From factory tours to internships: a three-step process
Specifically, it consists of three steps:
• In the third year, five visits to dairy processing plants, varying in type depending on the products and the size of the facilities.
• In the fourth year, a 54-hour “Dairy Industries” minor: courses taught by specialist faculty members, presentations by Lactalis experts on production processes, hands-on lab work on campus (yogurt, fresh cheese, mozzarella), and a two-day immersion in the cheese-making facility at ENIL in Saint-Lô.
• In the 5th year, the opportunity to continue at Lactalis, through a professional training contract or a final-year internship.
The program is open to all food science and agribusiness students, regardless of their post-graduation plans. Between 10 and 20 students will participate each year.
A concrete commitment, shared benefits
For Lactalis, getting involved in training is a way to directly contribute to the quality of future hires and to introduce students to its technical roles—roles they might not have considered on their own.
For UniLaSalle, this means an agri-food program that is becoming increasingly comprehensive: industry experts, production sites to visit, and an entire industry sector brought right into the classroom.
The afternoon was a perfect example of this: a Lactalis presentation, open to students in the program, provided an opportunity to introduce the company, its business areas, and its internship and work-study opportunities. This marked the first step toward bridging the gap between education and the professional world.
