Kraft Foods Inc. has named Rhonda Jordan the new head of its cheese and dairy division. The cheese and dairy division she now oversees accounted for 17% of Kraft’s $37.2 billion in sales last year but is losing sales to private-label grocery-store cheese brands.

Ms. Jordan began her Kraft career 21 years ago as a cheese marketer. As head of the company’s grocery unit last year, she repackaged and reformulated Kraft’s staid salad dressings. She also oversaw new pudding introductions for Jell-O that helped boost that brand’s sales 5% last year. And she launched new flavors, packaging and marketing for Jet-Puffed marshmallows that sparked a 14% sales jump. The company doesn’t yet know how well the new salad dressings are selling.

Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld has made cheese a top priority in the second year of her three-year plan to reignite growth at the nation’s largest food company. The business has lost ground to competitors in every month but one since Ms. Rosenfeld took charge in June 2006, a J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. analysis shows.

Kraft has started rolling out new cheese products, among them Bagel-Fuls — microwavable bagel sticks filled with cream cheese — and a line of cheese free of artificial growth hormones. In coming months, the company plans to introduce a resealable plastic case for its Deli Fresh cheeses. Similar to Tupperware, the packaging has worked for Oscar Mayer meats, and will help Kraft products stand out from the rest of the dairy aisle, a spokesman says.