Oak (flavoured milk)
brand of flavored milk

Oak (stylised OAK) is an Australian pasteurised flavoured milk and coffee milk brand owned by a French multinational corporation, Lactalis. It was first established in 1967 in New South Wales, as the general dairy brand of the Raymond Terrace Co-operative and its successor the Hunter Valley Co-operative Dairy Company. The origin of the Oak brand goes back to 1903. Oak flavoured milk was launched in Queensland, South Australia, and Victoria in 1998. It was discontinued in Victoria in 2006 but relaunched in 2010. Oak launched in Western Australia in October 2013. Oak was the naming rights sponsor of the National Rugby League team, the Penrith Panthers from 2012 until 2024.
History
Before 1967 and into the 1980s, Oak was used by the Hunter Valley Co-operative Dairy Company as a general-purpose brand applied to its standard dairy output, including fresh milk and dried milk products such as milk powder produced for storage and surplus management. It functioned primarily as an umbrella label for co-operative dairy processing rather than a dedicated flavoured milk range.
This changed in 1967 with the introduction of Oak Iced Coffee, which marked the brand’s shift into the flavoured milk market and positioned it as a competitor in Australia’s growing ready-to-drink dairy sector, including products such as Farmers Union Iced Coffee.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Oak (flavoured milk)” is brand of flavored milk. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through flavoured, milk and brand, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7073415. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1903, 1998 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oak (flavoured milk)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.