Rachel’s Organic Dairy, Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom

Rachel's Organic Dairy, a dairy product company operating in West Wales, UK, produces a range of premium organic dairy products such as milk, yoghurt, crème fraiche, rice desserts, butter (salted and unsalted) and cream-based products.

The company was first established in 1984 as a small farmhouse operation. It opened its first purpose-built dairy in 1992 (Phase 1) – an investment of £0.5 million – in Glan-yr-Afon Industrial Park, near Aberystwyth, and was able to process 3 million litres of organic milk per year. The demand for the products increased to such an extent that a second phase extension was opened in 1998 that increased the facility capacity to over 5 million litres per year; this required an investment of £0.35m. A further small extension costing £0.25m followed in 2002, which included an extra refrigerated fruit room and additional office space.

During this time, Rachel's Organic was acquired by Horizon Organic Dairy of America (1999), which was itself taken over by Dean Foods in early 2004. In 2002–04 the company's turnover doubled, with more than 10 million pots of yoghurt per year being produced. This prompted the plans for a new major expansion.

ORGANIC MILK PRODUCER

Rachel's Organic is now one of the major processors of organic milk in Wales and requires the full output from 20 major organic dairy farms to supply its new requirement of over 15 million litres per year. One of the major suppliers of milk to Rachel's is Calon Wen, a Welsh organic milk cooperative. The Rachel's Organic Dairy Phase 3 expansion received planning approval in 2003 and financial backing of around £3m. The investment into the company was supported by a processing and marketing grant from the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) using Welsh Assembly and European funding.

Construction of the extension started in late 2003 and was officially opened in November 2004 by Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly. The extension provided an additional 50 jobs at the company, bringing the total workforce to 100. Since the expansion the workforce has increased to 140 and yoghurt production has trebled.

RETAIL OUTLETS AND NEW PRODUCTS

The company supplies organic yoghurt and other dairy products to major supermarket chains such as Morrison, Tesco, Sainsburys, ASDA, Co-op and Waitrose; other clients include Ikea, the London Ritz and Eurostar catering. The new extension has increased daily output of the facility threefold, allowing the production of over 50 tonnes of yoghurt per day.

The company has certainly been helped by a manufacturing tie up with Yoplait Dairy Crest. This has helped Rachel’s develop more and better organic yoghurt products such as yoghurt drinks (introduced in September 2006), the ‘in the mood’ range of premium yoghurts in conjunction with Waitrose and Rachel’s Organic kids range (introduced in January 2006). Rachel’s products are now available across the majority of UK supermarkets but to continue its success the company needs to continue to introduce new products to the consumer to keep up with the competition.

CONTRACTORS AND CONSTRUCTION

The extension has increased the floor space of the facility by an additional 25,000ft², bringing the total area to 40,000ft². Construction of the building extension was carried out by Frank Galliers, and the installation of additional processing, compounding, packaging and storage equipment by Moody PLC.

The building included: new tank room, yoghurt filling room, fruit preparation suite, packaging warehouse, blast chill rooms, shrink wrapping room and cold storage warehouse. Two new raw milk silos, each of 60,000l capacity, and 11 yoghurt fermentation tanks, each of 4,000kg capacity, were provided by Pierre Guerin.

Moody PLC supplied and installed a raw milk separation plant of 5,000l per hour capacity, a cream pasteuriser of 1,000l per hour capacity, a formulation tank system of 8,000kg capacity, a yoghurt pasteuriser of 5,000l per hour capacity, two fruit addition modules of 1,000kg capacity and the process control system for the facility.

Graafland Engineering supplied an evaporator of 1,200l per hour capacity. Penmann Climatic Systems provided the blast chilling equipment, which is capable of handling 72 pallets at a time and also the air handling and ventilation system for the facility. Stancold was responsible for the design, supply and installation of 5000m² of composite insulated panels (white steel face with Foodsafe PVC laminate finish) to form a hygienic food processing and coldstore complex at Rachel’s Organic.

RACHEL'S ORGANIC PRODUCT RANGE

The company produces a full range of organic dairy products, but the major products are organic yoghurts, including a range of well known flavours and different styles such as Greek, fat free, low fat, bio-live and set yoghurts (now yoghurt drinks as well). The company is also well known for its introduction of new combination flavours such as Mango & Vanilla, Raspberry & Elderberry, and Peach & Passion Fruit. Special festive Christmas flavours such as the 'Rudolph's Organic' Christmas pudding yoghurt and Brandy and Nutmeg cream are also part of the product range.

The entire range is available in the standard 450g low density polyethylene (LDPE) pot, but Rachel's also produces smaller 50g single serve pots (these were first introduced for catering services at Ikea and Eurostar) and has introduced multi-pack production at the new facility (previously multi-packs were produced by a contract packager).