Change across the board for cheesemakers
Small producers are changing the way they work in a battle to save their industry, says Patrick McGuigan
The self-effacing Welsh cheesemaker Carwyn Adams is far happier being up to his elbows in milk at his small dairy in Carmarthenshire than he is talking about himself. But when the country’s restaurants, pubs and hotels were closed because of coronavirus, his company, Caws Cenarth, was suddenly plunged into a crisis that left him no choice but to make some noise.
Around 85 per cent of his sales were wiped out overnight at a time when the maturing rooms were filled to the brim with 40 tons of cheese for the busy Easter period. What made it even more serious was that Caws Cenarth specialises in soft and blue cheeses that have a limited shelf life. The clock was ticking on the future of his business and Adams was desperate; so desperate that he took the decision to make a plea to the public in a video on YouTube.
“Absolutely nothing was coming through on the order books and the cold-store was full with a tsunami of cheese,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do, but I thought if I could get 50 people to buy some cheese online that would be something.” The video, filmed on his phone as he paced up and down a country lane (walking calmed his stage-fright), saw Adams pour his heart out in a moving and emotional address explaining the catastrophe facing the family business. He also offered discounts on online cheese selection boxes, including an option to send out free cheese if people were struggling financially. The “social experiment”, as Adams describes it, was more successful than he could possibly have hoped for. In three days, the website had received 3,000 orders when normally it would do 30, with the vast majority happy to pay. “I had customers who had bought my cheese ringing up to ask if they could also give me a donation,” he says. “It’s people like them that are keeping British artisan cheesemakers going at the moment.”
Adams’ YouTube appearance has staved off immediate disaster, but the business still faces a desperately uncertain future. It’s the same for hundreds of small cheesemakers across the country.
The Specialist Cheesemakers Association (SCA) estimates that its 200-plus members have seen sales on average fall by 70 per cent in the past month after hospitality businesses, farmers’ markets and many delis closed. The situation has been compounded by supermarkets closing deli counters and the public stocking up on mass-produced cheese. At the same time, cows, sheep and goats are out at pasture producing gallons of