This Is Guernsey

The Dairy is costing a fortune - last year its losses totalled £303,000. But it could be restored to good health, says former conseiller Bob Chilcott, whose family was involved in the industry at the very beginning. In the first of a two-part feature, we look at the Dairy’s chequered history MILK is one of those everyday items that we take for granted - but it doesn’t appear in our fridges by magic. And another thing we take for granted is the high quality of our dairy products, courtesy of the world-famous Guernsey cows.

But somebody has to get it from the cow to the customer via modern production methods and hygiene standards - and that is where the Guernsey Dairy comes in.

It hasn’t existed forever and its origins can be traced to the early part of the 20th century.

Former Conseiller Bob Chilcott, now retired but still acutely interested in Guernsey business and States departments, had a family link with the Dairy long before he became the politician in charge of it.

The Dairy as we know it is a comparatively recent creation. Before the late 1930s, the island had two and they were both private.

The first was a co-operative to which not all farmers wanted to belong. Bob’s grandfather - a farmer/butcher - then set up the Grove Dairy, based at his farm in St Andrew’s, not far from the current site but on the other side of La Brigade Road and extending towards the St Martin’s end.

Now that there were two well-established operations, the States took them both over in what Bob sees as a barely believable example of compulsory purchase, but which others view as a case of the States having stepped in to help the struggling farmers.

Plans were drawn up, seemingly at a typical governmental pace, but nothing happened immediately and soon the Second World War and German Occupation were upon us. The bottling of milk stopped and the island’s dairymen went back to trading individually.

The Germans then began to take an interest and instructed the States to order all producers to send their milk to the Dairy, an arrangement that continued after the war.

By 1951, the States had built its own dairy at Bailiff’s Cross, installing as its first manager Ralph Chilcott, Bob’s uncle, who had been running the Grove. It was decided to introduce pasteurisation, a sterilisation process that marked a modern attitude to health and hygiene.

Post-war lack of money, though, meant that although a bottling room was built, the States couldn’t afford to buy the equipment to put in it, so retailers would take large cans around and transfer the milk into customers’ jugs.

Bottles were not destined to be associated with Guernsey milk and in the 1960s, pyramid-shaped Tetrapak cartons were introduced (method of opening: snip off the top. Method of closing: none).

In the late 1970s came an innovation that was to cause much hilarity among non-islanders when we told them: ‘No, we don’t have milk bottles. Ours comes in bags.’ These were plastic pouches used with a special plastic jug-type pourer. Unsurprisingly, they did not find a place in Guernsey hearts, but still the bottle was ignored and today’s familiar rectangular cartons were introduced.

Butter, the bright-yellow, salty, local type of which Guernsey people are so proud (contemporary fat and salt issues aside) had always been produced, but soon cheese was added to the list of products. The cheddar-style attracted criticism when first introduced, but in due course this settled down.

After its prominence in the early days, the Chilcott name had faded from the picture, but it was to re-emerge in the 1980s, when Bob, by then a prominent businessman and politician, became president of the States Dairy Committee. With a manager, John Newman, who shared his tough, sometimes abrasive manner, Bob set about bringing the operation up to date.

‘At the time we went round collecting the milk from farmers in churns - or they would bring it to us in churns - and we were concerned that it wasn’t being kept in the best condition. There was a lack of temperature control - and you can’t mess around with milk.’

He and John offered every dairy farmer who produced a significant amount a refrigerated tank, free of charge, and incorporated in their payments the extra electricity they would be using.

Among the other developments of an era in which the Dairy was run profitably was the introduction of Guernsey yogurt, which established a kind of cult following that even resulted in a small feature in the Guernsey Press when a reporter noticed that the rhubarb variety seemed to have disappeared.

Production of that came to an end in 2001, with the Dairy blaming the ‘prohibitive cost of natural flavourings’.

Despite the trials and tribulations the Dairy has experienced in recent times, Bob believes the industry could be brought back to good health.

‘Offer it back to the farmers,’ he said. ‘Another co-operative would make money. The milk business can be put right.’

John was manager of the Dairy from 1976 to 1983. A civil servant who had been at several departments already, he cheerfully admits to having known nothing about the industry at first.

‘I was brought in to do a job. Every career move I made was promotion.’

He wasn’t impressed with what he had taken over.

‘It was in a dreadful state,’ he said. ‘There had been no investment since Tetrapaks were introduced and nothing had really changed since the 1930s.’

A forthright character even now, in his advancing years, it is easy to imagine his no-nonsense partnership with Bob.

Their first major move was to prove unpopular. Sachets were widely used for milk in Canada and seemed like a good idea at first.

‘It was a mistake,’ John said. ‘The public didn’t like them.’

Although one might think that milk is milk - an irreplaceable part of most people’s diet - and that how it is packaged wouldn’t affect consumption, John said the sachets damaged sales and that only when cartons were introduced in 1982 did the figures go up again.

‘People didn’t like the feel of them. Some called them ﾓliver bagsﾔ,’ he explained.

Bottles had been used in the 1930s, including small ones containing one-third of a pint for schoolchildren. They were not seriously considered in John’s day because although reusable, they have to be returned and cleaned. And they break.

The cost of providing farmers with refrigerated tanks was offset by being able to reduce the number of tanker lorries and the frequency with which they went to collect the milk.

John learned the dairy industry rapidly and applied his keen business sense to every area. This included the ’spring flush’ - the surplus milk generated when cows feast on new grass. To balance this out financially, an arrangement was made whereby farmers were paid less during those times of plenty and more when the supply slowed during the winter.Surplus milk, though, meant more cream available, with the rest of the liquid simply poured away. The swing towards low-fat versions meant less waste, but also resulted in more cream. And what to do with it all?

As we have seen, the Dairy started to make cheese and yoghurt. For the former, a cheddar style was chosen, although a Camembert type had been considered. Some in the industry in the UK questioned the wisdom of getting into cheese production.

‘I got a few phone calls from the UK saying, ﾓyou must be madﾔ, but we ended up exporting it there,’ said John.

As for yoghurt, John names it as a big money-spinner. He priced it at a penny less than imported ones and it was soon selling 16,000 pots a week.

‘It isn’t easy to make, though,’ he pointed out. ‘It needs constant attention.’

The Guernsey Dairy was flying at this time and a steady stream of journalists from the national media came to see what it was doing right. There was a half-page article in the Financial Times, while the BBC’s farming programme also paid a visit, fronted by John Arlott, the cricket commentator and poet who retired to Alderney.

‘The programme was most complimentary,’ John said. ‘John Arlott thought the cheese was wonderful and ate loads of it while he was here.’

But success came at a price - and that price was an uncomfortable relationship with the farmers. With two strong characters at the helm (’We can both be difficult,’ the former manager volunteered), the accent was on knuckling down and getting the job done.

‘It boils down to direction,’ John said. ‘You’ve got to stand up to the staff and the farmers. You can’t have the place being run by shop stewards. And the antipathy from the farmers had to be seen to be believed. They were really antagonistic.’

He still can’t understand it, expressing the opinion that both dairy farmers and milkmen made a good living while he increased the price of his products annually at the rate of inflation. It was, as he describes it, a simple equation.

‘The Dairy took its operating costs out of the income and gave the rest to the farmers.’

Vindication came about six months after his retirement, when John received a letter from Peter Hocart of the Guernsey Farmers’ Association, whose members had had time to reappraise the situation.

‘They are very much aware now of the benefits they receive from the proper utilisation and marketing of their milk,’ it said. ‘Your years at the Dairy mark a turning point in the economy of the farming industry.’

As we head towards 2008, with a hefty price-hike coming hot on the heels of disputes with the milk retailers, the late 1970s and early 80s seem like a golden age.

‘I’m very upset at the way it’s gone since those days,’ said John.