The Milk
All of our cow’s milk is sourced from Crofthead Farm in Dumfries & Galloway.
The cows are made up of the Ayrshire breed which produce high quality milk with a good protein to fat ratio and are therefore provide excellent milk for cheese-making! The cows are cared for by a team of dedicated experts and a great deal of technology is employed to monitor cow health and wellbeing.
Sustainability
Crofthead dairy farm is highly sustainable.
Cows produce quite a lot of waste, this is collected and mixed with other agricultural waste products and organic matter and enters the AD plant on the farm. AD stands for Anaerobic Digester, they contain specialist microbes that turn the waste products into Methane gas, Carbon Dioxide gas and solids that are used on the farm as fertilizer. The methane is cleaned up and is supplied to the National Gas Grid to heat homes and fuel industry whilst the Carbon Dioxide is turned into dry ice in a specialist facility on the farm, this is used as a refrigerant for food and medicine transport etc
The farm also incorporates wind turbines and a biomass boiler with further work being done to reduce the use of diesel fuel by utilising methane (produced on site).
The Cheese
Nestled in the Eden Valley in Cumbria, Appleby Creamery produces a wide range of distinctive and characterful cheeses ranging from soft cheeses, such as blue, brie and smoked brie to hard varieties, including cheddar and caerphilly-style cheeses.
Product innovation is at the heart of Appleby Creamery and we are constantly evolving and developing new products, for example we are very proud to be launching one of the UK’s first Halloumi style cheeses.
Appleby Creamery was established in 2007. The current team is run by Maurice and supported by a team of dedicated cheese makers. The team have mostly been with the business since their teens and were trained by former founders of the business. This expertise and experience combined with the highest quality ingredients makes the Appleby Creamery cheese an amazing range of products which we are hugely proud of and we know you will enjoy.
Sustainability
To compliment the huge amount of sustainability work undertaken at Crofthead farm, Appleby Creamery have embarked on a project to reduce its reliance on both grid supplied electricity and lpg. We have installed an array of solar panels on the Creamery roof that will provide a high percentage of our electricity requirements, at peak it will generate 180kW and we are able to export up to 100kW of that green energy to the grid. In addition, we are switching over to electricity as our primary energy source for both pasteurisation and water heating (from lpg). We have identified several areas for further potential savings in our new maker space where we plan to produce Halloumi and Ricotta (both fairly energy hungry processes) by installing heat exchangers to utilise waste hot water.
