Rising demand for non-dairy milk alternatives has Australian nut industries excited about a potentially lucrative new market.

In the United States, sales of almond milk have overtaken soy milk, and the Australian macadamia industry has just launched a range of macadamia milks to try to claim their share of a health conscious big-spending market.

In Australian supermarkets, shelves that once stocked long life milk, and perhaps a small range of soy milks, are now brimming with a huge variety of non-dairy milk products, including oat milk, rice milk, coconut milk, and increasingly a range of nut-based drinks, like almond, cashew and macadamia milk.

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Nicolas Raiber, senior brand manager with Patons macadamia company, one of the Australian companies which have recently launched macadamia milk products, has just returned from the United States where the market for non-dairy milk drinks is huge and growing.

"The US is probably five to eight years ahead of us in terms of the non-dairy category, especially the milk," he said.

"What I saw is just amazing. Still almond and soy are probably the two main products that you will see on a shelf, but I came back with samples of quinoa milk, hazelnut milk, cashew, hemp (milk), so it's just amazing the number of products that they are launching.

"I like to use the US as a benchmark where I think Australia will go in the future.

"I'm totally convinced the non-dairy segment will grow and will gain more space in the pie."

In Australia, the non-dairy drink market is still relatively small, and is dominated by soy milks, with increasing growth in almond milk sales.

Non-dairy market share

Figures from Retail World for 2014, show sales of non-dairy milk products were worth $171.9 million, up 6.9 per cent on the previous year, while traditional milk sales were worth $2 billion, up 1.3 per cent.

Hemp, quinoa, cashew and hazelnut 'milk'-type beverages are growing in popularity in the United States. ( Cath McAloon )

Tim Jackson, marketing manager with almond company, Almondco Australia, has been surprised by the popularity of almond milk, with customers paying up to $4 a litre for a product that is about 90 per cent water.

"The interest in almond milk has gone off the charts. It's certainly grown a lot in the last two to three years," Mr Jackson said.

Most of the almond milk sold in Australia at the moment is made from imported nuts from California, but a number of local almond companies are looking to establish their own manufacturing businesses.

"The rate of popularity of almond milk across Australia is growing at such a rate that it's certainly attracted the interest of the big and the small in the market," Mr Jackson said.

While almond milk cappuccinos, called 'Al Pacinos', are now appearing on cafe menus around the country, traditional dairy milk sales still dominate.

Dairy Australia consumer marketing manager Glenys Zucco said while there was a wider range of non-dairy milks available, their share of the market was relatively small, growing from about 6.1 per cent to 6.5 per cent of the market in the past four years.

"We know that from the recent Australian health survey that on the day of the survey 68 per cent of Australians had cow's milk and only 3 per cent were having soy, or other alternatives, so it really is a small part of the market," Ms Zucco said.

Nut milk is mainly water

And with water making up more than 90 per cent of most nut milk drinks, there are concerns about whether consumers are getting what they are paying for.

Ms Zucco said while non-dairy products may be labelled as "milk", they did not have the same characteristics. Consumers who were replacing regular milk with non-dairy milk could be missing out on nutrients.

"They don't actually contain these nutrients and actually there's not much natural about these foods," Ms Zucco said.

Nicolas Raiber, of Patons, said when the company launched its macadamia milk in Canada later this month, it would not be allowed to call it milk due to Canadian regulations on labelling of non-dairy products.

Instead, it will be sold as a macadamia beverage or drink. Dairy Australia believes Australia should consider similar regulations.

Consumer group Choice said consumers needed to be aware that milk alternatives were not always nutritionally equivalent to cow's milk, with rice milk much lower in protein, and almond milk often not calcium-fortified.

It advised consumers to look for the health star rating on the front of pack and not to themselves be "milked" by fancy marketing.