Wyke Farms is now Europe’s largest producer of organic cheddar cheese

Wyke Farms, one of Europe’s biggest producers of cheese, has signed a deal with The Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative (OMSCo) to help it grow its organic cheddar production.

The UK-based cheesemaker and OMSCo are developing their existing relationship and plan to more than treble their already extensive range of organic cheese that totalled over 1,000 tonnes last year. 

The new arrangement will see Wyke Farms sourcing all the milk requirements for organic cheese production from OMSCo, whilst OMSCo will increase its range of specialist organic cheese made by Wyke Farms for export markets, and also take a share in the ownership of bulk cheddar stocks for a proportion of domestic and export sales.

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Rich Clothier, managing director and third generation family member at Wyke Farms, commented: “This arrangement means that Wyke and OMSCo have a fit for the future vehicle to supply the best quality organic cheddars to the world market. Our combined scale and efficiency makes us the logical supply partners for organic cheddar. It gives us the capacity and milk supply necessary to expand organic cheese production rapidly.

“It also gives us access to OMSCo’s different milk types to produce organic cheddar with different attributes and with access to different markets. It will complement our existing business which currently produces over 14,000 tonnes of cheddar annually, entirely from our own source of renewable energy.”

The additional milk will allow Wyke Farms and OMSCo to capitalise on the growth of the organic market on a global scale both to EU spec and USDA spec; something unattainable previously due to restricted milk supplies. The arrangement also allows Wyke and OMSCo to jointly own the maturing cheese stock so that cheddar stock can be built to supply a world market looking for longer matured cheddars with more flavour.

Wyke Farms sells more than 14,000 tonnes annually to 160 countries around the world.