UK – Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses, a British manufacturer of dairy products, has acquired the Parlick brand from cheesemaker Singletons, which ceased trading last month.
The acquisition of the Parlick brand will bring sheep’s milk cheese into Butlers Farmhouse’s range of cheese for retailers, wholesalers, and food service businesses including Traditional Lancashire, Blacksticks Blue, Red Leicester, and Double Gloucester, as well as hard and soft goat and sheep products.
According to the company, the deal supports a key part of the local supply chain and ensured no break in supply to Sainsbury, Morrison’s, and Waitrose.
“Bringing Parlick to Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses puts sheep’s milk cheese back into our range and supports a key part of the local Lancashire supply chain after Singletons very sadly cease trading,” said Matthew Hall, fourth-generation owner at Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses.
“It’s really important to us that we keep the British cheese renaissance going and Parlick will be part of that.”
The acquisition comes at a time when Butlers launched a new Christmas Cheese Selection Box in Waitrose on 1 November and in its online cheese store.
The selection box (rsp: £15) contains five cheese varieties: Blacksticks Blue, Firecracker Red Leicester, Goosnargh Gold, This is Proper Goat’s Cheese and This is Proper Cheddar.
The company has managed to automate all aspects of the cheese-making process from activity at its diary in Inglewhite, to the cut and pack processes of the despatch plant.
In 2015, Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses partnered with Systems Integration to install the Integreater production management software it uses in managing its operations.
Integreater is a range of food productivity software to help manufacturers see, measure, simplify and improve their business. It includes stock control, despatch, quality assurance, weighing and labeling, tracking and monitoring, forecasting, planning, sales and purchase order processing, packaging waste, and yield management.
Established in 1992, Systems Integration has partnerships with food manufacturers across the UK and North America, including Vantage Foods, which uses its Production Planning software at its Camp Hill site in Pennsylvania, US.
The firm also works with South Caernarfon Creameries dairy co-operative in North Wales, which has nearly 150 members that manufacture 10,500 tonnes of cheese and 12 million liters of milk a year.
It uses Integreater’s enterprise manufacturing execution system, e-MES, to automate the creamery’s grading and quality assurance system, updating entire batch records with sample test results on its 37-acre site to reduce labor costs.
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