Big cheese deal with Co-op brings £1m to Wensleydale

The agreement will see The Wensleydale Creamery, in Hawes, supply cheeses to be sold under The Co-operative’s own brand label.

Having recently invested £360,000 in cutting and packing equipment to cope with new orders, The Wensleydale Creamery will use this machinery as part of the production process for The Co-operative’s cheese range.

David Hartley, the creamery’s managing director, said: “This is a substantial amount of business, which will add £1m to our annual turnover.

“We have secured this deal thanks to The Wensleydale Creamery’s ability to create a high-quality product, and the blending expertise of our cheese-making master craftsmen.”

Mark Cloudy, The Co-operative’s cheese buyer, said: “The Co-operative prides itself on the range and quality of the goods it sells, and teaming up with the experts at The Wensleydale Creamery, in Hawes, will enable our company to offer a mouth-watering range of high-quality blended cheeses to our customers.”

The Wensleydale Creamery, which employs more than 200 people over two sites, has worked with The Co-operative to develop some of the cheese recipes.

The range will comprise Wensleydale with cranberries, Wensleydale with papaya and mango, white Stilton with apricots, double Gloucester with onion and chive and Fountains Gold cheddar with cracked black pepper, and will be sold as 180g wedges.

The deal follows a contract to supply The Co-operative with cheese containing Fairtrade ingredients over the Christmas and New Year period.

The cheese was sold on the store chain’s deli counters.

It also rounds off a successful period for the creamery, which had its busiest-ever Christmas period, producing more than two million cheeses for the festive period.

The months of October, November and December normally account for 40pc of its annual production, but the double-shift working introduced in October was expected to last 11 weeks – twice as long as the same period last year.