Wyke Farms grows organic cheddar cheese deal

04-Jul-2017 - Last updated on 05-Jul-2017 at 10:06 GMT

Wyke Farms agreed to extend its partnership with The Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative

Wyke Farms has agreed a deal to extend its partnership with The Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative (OMSCo), to become what it claims to be the EU’s largest producer of organic cheddar cheese.

The deal will see Wyke Farms source all of its milk for organic cheese production from OMSCo. OMSCo will extend its range of organic cheeses, made by Wyke Farms, for exports. It will also take a share in the ownership of bulk cheddar stocks for both domestic and overseas sales.

The partnership will see Wyke Farms and OMSCo more than treble their current organic cheese output, which last year topped 1,000t. The firms will target both EU and US sales, they said.

‘A fit for the future vehicle’

Wyke Farms md Richard Clothier said: “This arrangement means that Wyke and OMSCo have a fit for the future vehicle to supply the best quality organic cheddars to the world market. Our combined scale and efficiency makes us the logical supply partners for organic cheddar.

“It gives us the capacity and milk supply necessary to expand organic cheese production rapidly. It also gives us access to OMSCo’s different milk types to produce organic cheddar with different attributes and with access to different markets.”

The deal will complement Wyke Farms’s current cheddar operations, which produces more than 14,000t a year.

Extending the partnership will also help OMSCo to expand its ingredients business, said the suppliers’ co-operative.

‘An exciting opportunity’

OMSCo md Richard Hampton said: “This new chapter presents an exciting opportunity to drive our joint business together, supporting the development of cheese stocks as well as allowing us to further develop our supplies of UK organic whey for use in our rapidly expanding specialist ingredients business.

“This is an example of OMSCo working more closely with our markets, and end users of organic products across the globe.”

Wyke Farms is the UK’s largest independent milk processor and producer of renewable energy, it claimed. It supplies a number of UK retailers, including Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and Waitrose.

Meanwhile, Wyke Farms won the Environmental initiative of the year award at last year’s Food Manufacture Excellence Awards. The closing date for this year’s entries is Monday July 17. To find out more about entering the awards, visit the FMEAs website.