Everything about Dairy Crest totally explained
Dairy Crest Group plc is a major dairy products company in the
United Kingdom. Its brands include
Cathedral City Cheddar cheese (which is made in
Davidstow, a place in
Cornwall which isn't a City and doesn't have a Cathedral),
Utterly Butterly,
Vitalite,
Clover, St Ivel and
FRijj. They also deliver milk to around 1.1 million households via their
milkmen.
Since 1981, Dairy Crest was originally the processing arm of the government body or
quango known as the
Milk Marketing Board and was
privatised in August 1996. In July 2000, it acquired the dairy and cheese products division of
Unigate (based near the
BBC in London). In November 2002, it acquired the
St Ivel spreads company (based in
Wootton Bassett in
Wiltshire). In September 2004, it acquired the
Country Life butter brand from English Butter Marketing Company. In July 2006, it acquired
Express Dairies from
Arla Foods for £33m. In October 2006, it sold the majority of its own label cheese business to
First Milk, its Scottish equivalent, along with the creameries and factory that produce most of the products concerned.
Since 1991, Dairy Crest has had a joint venture with
French dairy company
Yoplait called
Yoplait Dairy Crest (often abbreviated to YDC) which is 51% owned by Yoplait and 49% by Dairy Crest. The company distributes Yoplait brand products in the UK.
In January 2007 Dairy Crest finalised the acquisition of St Hubert for £248 million. St Hubert's brands Cholegram, Le Fleurier and Omega 3 are among the top selling spreads in France, while Vallé is the market leader in Italy.
Liquid Milk
Dairy Crest is a major supplier of own label milk to UK supermarkets. Current contracts include Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Lidl and Co-Op.
Dairy Crest is the largest UK 'middle ground' distributor of milk and dairy products, servicing wholesalers, foodservice and Bottle Milk Buyers (known within the industry as BMBs).
Dairy Crest is also the largest doorstep milk operator (for example the traditional UK milkman) in the UK. Despite the 'doorstep' industry suffering a gradual decline since the early 1980's, this is still a profitable part of the industry.
Dairy Crest (along with Unigate and Express Dairies) pursued an aggressive policy of franchising milk rounds in the early 1990's, however by the early noughties many rounds had reverted to being managed.
In 2007, Dairy Crest launched "milk&more", an online ordering service for its doorstep customers.
Cheese
It produces several brands of cheese. The most popular one is
Cathedral City, a brand of
cheddar cheese produced at
Davidstow in
Cornwall, from a 25 year old recipe. It is currently the most popular brand of cheddar cheese in the
UK. Dairy Crest bought the brand from Mendip Foods Ltd in 1995.
Other cheese brands include
Davidstow, the
Hartington brand of
Blue Stilton and
Wexford.
Spreads
St.Ivel Gold is a low fat spread that was launched in 1977 by St Ivel and became popular for being lower in fat than other brands.
Originally a
Kraft then St Ivel brand,
Vitalite is a
sunflower spread which is known for its Smiling
Sun which was part of a famous advertising campaign, with a
song rhyming Vitalite. Empty Vitalite tubs are also popular for being used as bowls for feeding pets.
Utterly Butterly is a brand that's made from buttermilk, there's also a Scandinavian variant. It is a sponsor of a
wing walking team.
Willow is a churned buttermilk-based spread, which is sold as 250 g blocks. Other brands include
Golden Churn,
Country Life (formerly owned by English Butter) and
Clover.
The butters and
Clover are made in
Crudgington in
Telford, and the other spreads such as
Gold are made in
Kirkby in north
Merseyside.
Drinks
FRijj is a
milkshake drink. It is typically sold in 500ml curvy bottles. Flavours include
chocolate,
banana,
strawberry,
vanilla and
white chocolate. There are also limited edition flavours featuring characters from
The Simpsons. These are typically available for a few months at a time. The following flavour/character combinations have been released: banoffee pie (Krusty the Klown); raspberry doughnut (Homer Simpson); mint chocolate (Mr Burns); chocolate fudge brownie (Chief Wiggum). The current limited edition, raspberry, isn't associated with any character, and used to be part of the standard range. By popular demand, chocolate fudge brownie has become a permanent flavour.
Ingredient Products
Milk powders etc.
Production sites
The main production sites in the UK are in
Chadwell Heath, close to the
A12 which bottles much of the milk for London, and at Severnside in
Stonehouse in
Gloucestershire, close to junction 13 of the
M5.
Advertising
From the 1950s onwards there were several memorable advertising campaigns by the Milk Marketing Board. Slogans included: "Full of natural goodness", "Is your man getting enough?", "Milk's Gotta Lotta Bottle" (written by the advertising executive
Rod Allen) and "Watch out there's a humphrey about" (1970s) which was used in conjunction with images of a long straw 'stealing' milk from a glass.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dairy Crest'.
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