Leyburn-based Curlew Dairy has been given £1,000 from the Small Business Grant scheme to help buy a milk trailer to transport the raw product from farm to dairy.
Based in a converted garage, the dairy turns raw milk into Wensleydale cheese – the Old Roan is created by hand in small batches and then sold locally. But to expand owner Samantha Spence needed a trailer capable of carrying 1,000 litres of milk to them daily – moving away from the borrowed equipment they had been using.
Shew said: “We began making cheese in our micro dairy early last year using unpasteurised milk from a local dairy farm. Sales went really well and we quickly realised we needed to make larger batches. The grant allowed us to buy a milk trailer to transport larger quantities of milk from the farm to the dairy.
“Making our process more efficient allowed us to really focus on the cheese recipe and just before Christmas we became stocked at Neal’s Yard Dairy and Paxton & Whitfield in London – two of the best artisan cheese shops in the country. We wouldn’t have achieved this without the support we received.”
The Small Business Grant scheme offers up to £1,000 to small businesses under 36 months old to help start and grow. The fund can be used towards the purchase of equipment, marketing costs and adaptation to premises.
