Focus: Dairy Industry - Client Case Study
Helping Woodbridge Farm and Dorset Blue Vinny build a future proof business Old Mill clients and owners of Dorset Blue Vinny, the Davies family, discuss the key points in future proofing their dairy farm. Who are they? Dorset Blue Vinny is a family owned cheese making business based near Sturminster Newton in Dorset; they produce a traditional semi-hard blue cheese made from pasteurised, handskimmed cow’s milk. The business was established by Mike and Christine Davies in the early 1980s and the Davies family have been dairy farmers for over 50 years. Like many farmers across the South West, they saw the opportunity to diversify into the food and drink industry, starting with the resurrection of the 300-yearold recipe for Dorset Blue Vinny. The business is located at Woodbridge Farm and now is run on a day-to-day basis by their son Richard and their daughter, Emily. Emily is also heavily involved in managing their second business, The Dorset Blue Soup Co. to produce popular handmade chutneys and soups.
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Most impressively throughout their evolution, Woodbridge Farm has continued to be a working farm and home to over 270 Holstein Friesian cows, which continuously produce milk for their popular cheese. The farm has been steered to success by two generations.
What makes them successful? By investing in their product, listening to their customers and making the shift over to Cloud-based accounting, they are in a strong position to remain competitive. They have embraced diversification and have been smart about it; utilising their resources, tapping into a niche market and building strong relationships with suppliers and wholesalers.
Overcoming challenges: the need to diversify As well as being cheese makers, they manage a working farm and, consequently, there are different cost centres that need to be carefully monitored. Having diversified the farm business, the need soon became apparent to bring together both the farm and the cheese making businesses, ensuring they both run side by side in a more streamlined way. ‘Working closely with the team at Old Mill, we identified that Xero’s Cloudbased solution was the way forward,’ said Emily. ‘The move to Xero was a massive transition for us as there’s a lot of paperwork generated because of the cheese sales, so we needed to set up all the cost centres and systems. We can now pull the right information on a monthly basis to provide us with much better insights to be able to run the business.’
