Campbeltown/Mull of Kintyre creamery to close after almost 100 years

After 18 months of trying to sell its Campbeltown Creamery, First Milk have had to admit defeat and have on Friday (1st Nov) entered into the required consultation period with 14 employees.

The last hope for a sale as a going concern lay with what turned out to be a successful crowd funding bid from the 29 local supplying dairy famers. Sadly when the commercials were crunched it simply wasn’t even close to looking like it would be a viable sustainable business to preserve & continue.

The farmers explored numerous avenues with the aim of securing the sites future and its Mull of Kintyre cheddar cheese brand but it was simply a massive vertical hill to climb, so having opened in 1923 the doors look set to close in 2019 after almost 100 years of cheese production.

The farmers waved the white flag at a meeting last Wednesday evening. Better to have tried and failed than not to try at all but the world of cheese brand promotion and retail sales is very tough and not for the feint hearted.

The good news consolation for those 29 farmers is that going forward they will continue to have their milk collected and paid for by First Milk at the Co-op’s member price with no additional haulage charge unlike some others in Scotland! (See Above).

Sadly for the 14 employees there appears to be no income protection.

Sainsbury’s currently buy an estimated 400 tonnes of Mull of Kintyre cheese and one proposal was to ramp up the tonnage sold to Sainsbury’s and at the same time charge them up to an additional £1000 tonne to circa £4000 tonne for the creamery’s total anticipated output of circa 1400 tonnes year.

It wasn’t an offer Sainsbury’s or other retailers could back and given the harsh commercials it could easily be a relief that those farmers didn’t take on the creamery.

Closure has been on the cards for several years and it has not come without a huge effort to prevent the doors closing by all involved.

One producer sent Ian a copy of Page 5 of last weeks Scottish Farmer and a poorly researched article by Ken Fletcher. It claimed staff had been informed of the closure last Tuesday, before the farmer bid was shelved, and even talked about “a producer backlash” both of which were miles away from the truth and the dairy equivalent of fake news.