Common sense approach that has led to success on two fronts

John Gibson was looking forward to an early retirement when his wife persuaded him to buy a Yorkshire cheese factory.

He had sold his North East manufacturing business, John Gibson Plastics, the year before and was contemplating days in the garden at his home in Masham, North Yorkshire.

But when the closure of Hawes Creamery hit the headlines in 1992, his wife suggested he was the man to revive the business.

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The owner, Dairy Crest, had caused outrage by deciding to focus its cheese manufacturing in Lancashire and making 59 people redundant in the process.

“I kept seeing the news and various people were trying to revive it,” said Mr Gibson. “The local authority tried, other groups tried, and none of them appeared to have any business acumen or sense.

“My wife suggested I should do something about it so that was the impetus. I went and had a look at the buildings, came home and said ‘they look like old rundown scout huts, I don’t think I’ll bother’.”

But Mrs Gibson persuaded him to look into the opportunity further and, after he met some of the former managers, they all decided to try to buy the site.

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Obtaining the Creamery was no mean feat as Dairy Crest was reluctant to sell the site to another cheese maker. “They didn’t want to know us at first,” he said. “We said it was immoral that they’d made all these people redundant and cheese was the only product that could be made up there in a rural community.”

Eventually, the group, which included Mr Gibson and David Hartley, now managing director, bought the site for £200,000 and formed Wensleydale Dairy Products in November 1992. They spent £500,000 updating the site in the first year.

Mr Gibson, who was chairman of the company until 2006, was instrumental in showing the team how to run and develop the business. “They were very naive,” he said. “David Hartley came on brilliantly but he was a fairly junior production manager at the start.”

Today, the company employs more than 200 people across two manufacturing sites and contributes £11m a year to the Yorkshire Dales economy through milk payments, wages and purchases.

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Mr Gibson attributes the company’s success to “straightforward common sense”. “I’ve always believed that if you say you’re going to deliver something next Wednesday, you deliver it next Wednesday and you deliver quality,” he said.

The purchase of the Creamery was Mr Gibson’s second business investment in 1992. In April, he decided to back Paul Theakston in establishing a new brewery following a falling out within the family when their brewery was sold to Scottish & Newcastle. Mr Theakston wanted to keep the brewing local to Masham and set up his own business, The Black Sheep Brewery.

Mr Gibson, who owns almost five per cent of the shares, invested £25,000 in the company. It now has a £18.35m turnover and employs over 100 staff. He said: “I knew Paul, so I thought it would be a good investment.”

He added: “It’s developed even better than I thought it would.”

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One of the biggest successes for both businesses is their visitor centres. Mr Gibson designed the centre at the Creamery in the mid-1990s, which was replicated at the brewery. Both centres are now key to their profit.

In 2010 the Creamery expanded its centre with an £800,000 makeover, which has already added £1m to its turnover in the first year.

Mr Gibson said: “To make it really profitable we had to extend it because we couldn’t cope with the number of visitors.”

The creamery is also currently in the final stage of its fight to give Wensleydale Cheese Protected Designation of Origin status from the European Union.

Mr Gibson said: “The next year is going to be hard but both businesses are well placed to continue growing.”