Say cheese
Dairy farming is at the heart of The Tipperary Cheese Company, which has achieved success at home and abroad with its carefully researched product range
The Tipperary Cheese Company’s big unique selling point is its provenance, according to business development and marketing manager Thomas Hayes.
“Our family has been farming on this site for over 400 years and has always been in the dairy industry,” he says. “Faced with the difficulties presented by milk quotas in the 1980s, my father Donal started a milk round and then developed this into a cheese company with his brother Liam.”
From one cream cheese product sold to local hotels and restaurants in 1989, the business has grown to having a range of over 30 products. These include cheeses, yoghurts and cream and packaging of various sizes and shapes.
“We have done a huge amount of research on product development over the past 15 years. As we are relatively small, we can’t compete on price so we go into markets at a premium level to make our products stand out that bit more,” Hayes explains.
“Variety is important – we don’t just produce one type of cream cheese and will tailor products to meet customer requirements, for example by introducing higher levels of milk solids or taking out salt,” he explains. “About 90% of what we produce is made with milk from our 200 cows. All the rest is sourced locally.”
The Tipperary Cheese Company’s products are sold mainly to the food service market in Ireland, the UK, parts of Europe and some as far as China.
“We have a good reputation in the UK now. One of our customers there put us in touch with two food service companies on mainland Europe, which decided to go with us,” says Hayes.
In recent years, the Hayes family started to see the potential for its products in the retail sector. “We were selling to caterers in hospitals and got good feedback from patients wondering where to get our yoghurts,” says Hayes. Having achieved listings at a couple of SuperValu stores in Co Galway a year ago, the company now has two part-time sales reps on the road with a view to achieving further supermarket listings.
The Tipperary Cheese Company employs 25-30 people between the farm and factory on the site near Thurles. Growth has been particularly rapid in the past five to six years. Turnover has gone up from around €3m to €5m during that timeframe.
“Variety is important – we don’t just produce one type of cream cheese and will tailor products to meet customer requirements”