Price of milk in the UK from 1990 to 2019, both each month and the two-year average. Values are in 2019 prices.[1]
In Europe, UK milk production is third after France & Germany and is around the tenth highest in the world. There are around 12,000 dairy farms in the UK.[2]
Around 14 billion litres of milk are commercially produced in the UK each year.
Britain eats around 2000 tonnes of cheese a day. The World Cheese Awards are run by theGuild of Fine Food.
In 1960Somerset produced the most milk in England.[3]
In July 1979,Unigate sold 75% of its milk production to the Milk Marketing Board for £55m. This gave the Milk Market Board 22% of butter in England and Wales, and 25% of cheese.[4]
By 1985 40% of milk was bought in supermarkets.
In January 1989, Unigate, run by John Clement, sold all its milk processing north of the Thames to Dairy Crest, for £152m (£126m net). The sale included seven processing sites and eighty nine distribution depots. Before the sale Unigate produced a third of liquid milk in England and Wales. It gave Dairy Crest 16% of milk processing in England and Wales.[5]
The British milk industry became deregulated on 1 November 1994.
Consumption of cheese in the UK increased 24% from 1974 to 1982 to 272,000 tonnes, with two-thirds of that Cheddar.[6]
Lymeswold cheese was introduced in the south of England in October 1981, and across the UK in September 1982, due to an over-supply of milk. It was developed by Dairy Crest at Crudgington, and manufactured at Cannington in Somerset. It was selling £5m a year in 1984, and outsold all other blue cheeses.
All was going well until Lymeswold production was moved toAston by Wrenbury (Newhall, Cheshire), near Nantwich in Cheshire in April 1984, to make 4,000 tonnes per year. This would be equal to the annual British consumption of Stilton cheese, which was an optimistic sales figure, and four times the production of the former Cannington plant.[7][8][9] There were technical difficulties in the product, and sales soon plummeted. Dairy Crest removed it in May 1992.
The Cheshire site was bought by New Primebake, in 1993 for £0.75m, who were later bought byBakkavör in 2006. From September 1993, the site now makes 6 million garlic baguettes every week, with 70 tonnes of butter; nearly allgarlic baguettes in British supermarkets are produced at that Cheshire site.
Lockerbie,Dumfriesshire,Milk Link, the largest dairy plant in Scotland, makes cheddar cheese.[11] On the afternoon of Friday July 4 1975, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh toured the Express Dairy Foods Factory, with the chairman of the Express Dairy Company, J Travers Clarke.
Stranraer, Dumfries & Galloway, makes 'Seriously Spreadable' soft cheddar cheese, formerly McLelland, bought byLactalis (Nestlé) in 2005, known as the Caledonian Cheese Company; the Princess Royal opened the extended Galloway Creamery, partly owned by Unigate and theScottish Co-operative Wholesale Society, on Friday October 4 1991,[12]later bought by McLelland and Sons in 1995, then Lactalis in 2005
Appleby-in-Westmorland, situated in theEden Valley in Cumbria, so giving the name to Eden Valley Foods, when owned by Eden Dairy UK Ltd; it was visited by Princess Anne on Monday July 1 1985,[18] and the Prince of Wales on Tuesday April 11 2017.[19]
Aspatria, north-west Cumbria, the Lake District Creamery makes cheddar cheese
Unilever Gloucester, although many ice-creams are reconstituted vegetable oil, with no dairy origin, theMagnum (ice cream), it makes, is a dairy product, and has been the UK's best-selling ice-cream for over thirty years
Aston by Wrenbury, south Cheshire, the Aston Creamery had been making cheese since 1914, made Lymeswold cheese for Dairy Crest from 1984 to May 1992; the site now produces most supermarket garlic baguettes for Bakkavör
Longridge, central Lancashire, closed by Dairy Crest on 1 November 1994
Chard Junction, next toChard Junction railway station, in the south of Somerset, next to the Dorset border, owned by Unigate from 1989; main butter production stopped in 2003, replaced by alcohol butter and cream products; closed in late 2015
Former Dairy Crest butter factory at Crudgington in east Shropshire
Crudgington, east Shropshire, north of Telford, closed as Dairy Crest in 2014, made Country Life butter
Former butter factory at Great Torrington, owned by Dairy Crest, seen in March 2009
Cuddington, Eddisbury, central Cheshire, west of Northwich, made Ski yoghurt for Express Dairy Foods (Eden Vale); Ski yoghurt had 45% of UK production in the 1970s;[25]Paul Kewan set up Swiss Milk Products in 1963, being bought by Express Dairy Group (Express Dairies) in 1964; the Horners Creamery opened a yoghurt factory on Warrington Road in April 1967 to supply Scotland and the north;[26] Nestlé boughtSki Dairy in February 2002 for £145m, and production was moved to Minsterley in Shropshire[27]
Evercreech, east Somerset, was C & G Prideaux, Unigate, St Ivel, Uniq then Greencore, closed 2018[28][29][30]
Royal Wootton Bassett, north Wiltshire, south of theM4, former headquarters of St Ivel, was Unigate, made yoghurt and the 'Gold' margarine, closed in 2003
Only 3% of milk in the UK is delivered to the door. There was an 80% drop in deliveries when supermarkets began to sell their own milken masse. The largest commercial deliverer of milk in the UK has around 500,000 customers because there has been a recent upswing in demand for door deliveries.
Production was regulated by theMilk Marketing Board until 1994; its processing division is nowDairy Crest.AHDB Dairy is a central resource for the UK dairy industry.
The dairy industry is a large source of waterway pollution in the UK. It is linked to half of all farm pollution, largely from the waste produced by cows.[31] This pollution leads tofish kills and general harm to river ecosystems.[32]
Bailey, N. Z. Alison. "Trends in dairy farming and milk production: the cases of the United Kingdom and New Zealand."Achieving sustainable production of milk (Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing, 2017) pp. 301-324.
Crossley, Eric Lomax.The United Kingdom Dairy Industry (1959).
March, M. D., et al. "Current trends in British dairy management regimens."Journal of dairy science 97.12 (2014): 7985-7994.online
Taylor, David. "The English dairy industry, 1860-1930."Economic History Review 29.4 (1976): 585-601.online
