The dairy industry in the United Kingdom is the industry of dairy farming that takes place in the UK.
In Europe, UK milk production is third after France & Germany and is around the tenth highest in the world. There are around 12,000 dairy farms in the UK. [2]
Around 14 billion litres of milk are commercially produced in the UK each year.
Britain eats around 2000 tonnes of cheese a day. The World Cheese Awards are run by the Guild of Fine Food.
In 1960 Somerset produced the most milk in England. [3]
In July 1979, Unigate sold 75% of its milk production to the Milk Marketing Board for £55m. This gave the Milk Market Board 22% of butter in England and Wales, and 25% of cheese. [4]
By 1985 40% of milk was bought in supermarkets.
In January 1989, Unigate, run by John Clement, sold all its milk processing north of the Thames to Dairy Crest, for £152m (£126m net). The sale included seven processing sites and eighty nine distribution depots. Before the sale Unigate produced a third of liquid milk in England and Wales. It gave Dairy Crest 16% of milk processing in England and Wales. [5]
The British milk industry became deregulated on 1 November 1994.
Consumption of cheese in the UK increased 24% from 1974 to 1982 to 272,000 tonnes, with two-thirds of that Cheddar. [6]
Lymeswold cheese was introduced in the south of England in October 1981, and across the UK in September 1982, due to an over-supply of milk. It was developed by Dairy Crest at Crudgington, and manufactured at Cannington in Somerset. It was selling £5m a year in 1984, and outsold all other blue cheeses.
All was going well until Lymeswold production was moved to Aston by Wrenbury (Newhall, Cheshire), near Nantwich in Cheshire in April 1984, to make 4,000 tonnes per year. This would be equal to the annual British consumption of Stilton cheese, which was an optimistic sales figure, and four times the production of the former Cannington plant. [7] [8] [9] There were technical difficulties in the product, and sales soon plummeted. Dairy Crest removed it in May 1992.
The Cheshire site was bought by New Primebake, in 1993 for £0.75m, who were later bought by Bakkavör in 2006. From September 1993, the site now makes 6 million garlic baguettes every week, with 70 tonnes of butter; nearly all garlic baguettes in British supermarkets are produced at that Cheshire site.
When Nestlé bought the Ski yoghurt enterprise on 31 January 2002, Ski yoghurt had 11% of British yoghurt consumption; Müller had 30%. [10]
Only 3% of milk in the UK is delivered to the door. There was an 80% drop in deliveries when supermarkets began to sell their own milk en masse. The largest commercial deliverer of milk in the UK has around 500,000 customers because there has been a recent upswing in demand for door deliveries.
Production was regulated by the Milk Marketing Board until 1994; its processing division is now Dairy Crest. AHDB Dairy is a central resource for the UK dairy industry.
The dairy industry is a large source of waterway pollution in the UK. It is linked to half of all farm pollution, largely from the waste produced by cows. [17] This pollution leads to fish kills and general harm to river ecosystems. [18]
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