Farm of the Week: From small acorns grows successful milk enterprise

Acorn Dairies made its name in the Darlington area but is becoming a force to be reckoned with in Yorkshire too.

We met up with the family behind the business at Hallwith, near Spennithorne, near Leyburn – the foothold for a second stage of the Yorkshire push.

The story goes back 20 years, to when Graham Tweddle left college to join his father Gordon on the family dairy farm at Archdeacon Newton, near Darlington.

"We could see the writing on the wall then, in the mid 90s," said Graham.

"There were already five or six thousand cow units in California that weren't making money because they weren't big enough. There was pressure on from Eastern Europe and ASDA were buying milk in from Poland.

"At the time we had 300 cows on 300 acres – very intensive, cows inside for ten months of the year, and us growing a lot of maize to feed them.

"Still the profit wasn't there.

"How do you increase the profit on a litre of milk? We thought, we're supplying a liquid product into a liquid market, so why should our milk price be dictated by milk powder production in New Zealand? Our first market here was Darlington.

"We had 90,000 houses drinking liquid milk. We wanted to supply that market."

Two decisions were made. One was to bottle their own milk and sell it direct to the public through door-step deliveries, the other was to turn the cows over to an organic system – partly because father Gordon was worried about the amount of chemicals and the techniques used in conventional high-production dairying, but also to be able, at that time, to offer something different.

Five years later, Graham and his father were joined by sister Caroline, who now looks after the 'back-office' and marketing side of the business.

"We benefited from being so close to Darlington," she said.

"We were also very close to the A1, so we could get up to Newcastle and down to York and Leeds quickly, and cheaply. A lot of farms would have a lot of difficulty hitting markets like those directly without putting on a significant cost for transport.

"The company also benefited from having Graham coming straight out of university, eager and ready to push on, and a forward-thinking father (Gordon) who was very keen to look at new things.

"The energy that family members put into a business is unparalleled, and that's really driven it."

The expansion onto the tenancy near Leyburn added 130 more milkers to the herd and a whole new market.

"It was the strength of doorstep sales in Darlington which led to the move into Yorkshire," said Graham.

"We were approached by buyers in that North Yorkshire band, wanting to supply an organic milk in glass, so as a result our milk from the farm at Hallwith is now being delivered to a bottled-milk buyer, Brian Lockey, who covers a band from Bedale heading west and picking up all the little villages there."

At the heart of the Acorn Dairy philosophy is the idea that happy cows are productive cows, and with this in mind the Tweddles have gone for a breed which gives longevity above turbocharged production.

"We are in the process of changing the whole herd over to Dairy Shorthorn, which is a traditional breed for the North East, and very suited to an organic system," said Graham, who now has the job of managing the herds.

"Under organic rules, 80 per cent of the cow's intake has got to be from forage, so that is either grazed grass or preserved silage or hay. You can't feed concentrates.

"We can't go out and buy an artic load of mis-shapen bread buns, or citrus pulp, and feed that to our cows. And your Shorthorn is quite happy eating forage.

"Your Holstein, think of it maybe as a Ferrari, takes a lot of high-energy concentrates alongside the forage. They do eat the forage, but they take a lot of energy going alongside to produce a large volume of milk. We are farming Ford Mondeos.

"That's what we tell our WI groups when they come round. It's low energy in and low volume out. We're only asking our cows to do 6,500 litres per year. We're not aiming for 12,000, 13,000 litres per cow.

Caroline says the lower pressure on the cows is central to the organic system, which is why they have moved away from the higher-yielding breeds.

"We would have to give them antibiotic support. Pushing a cow to that limit means they have a huge udder, they probably have foot problems.

"Our cows are much smaller animals, with smaller udders, under less pressure."

Although the Tweddles concentrate the vast majority of their effort on direct sales to the public, they will deal with the supermarkets, but only when it is in their interests. They enjoy being in a position where they do not have to.

They deal with Waitrose and Morrisons and have been happy with both. Waitrose, of course, is famous for being able to charge its customers for a fair deal for farmers. But Graham Tweddle says Morrisons has been good too.

"They drive a hard bargain, but they stick to it."

He says diversity is the key to survival and that is why Acorn is now concentrating on building up sales direct to the public in North Yorkshire.

"We want to keep a balance in the business. We don't want to become over-reliant on one particular customer, be it NHS contracts, or a multiple, particularly at the moment.

"Councils will be feeling the pinch, come the next budget round. They're going to have their budgets cut.

"So we want to turn our attention back to doorsteps once again."

Acorn Dairy milk is available at many small and village shops across North Yorkshire and some branches of Morrisons and Waitrose.

A full list of stockists, and of doorstep deliveries, is available at www.acorndairy.co.uk/

CW 16/10/10