Cork couple changing the milk scene despite not owning a farm

They wanted to sell from their Jersey herd direct to the customer. The problem was they didn’t have land to build a micro-dairy on, so they hit on an innovative solution

Michael Cahalane began milking his neighbour’s cows at the age of 12, and his passion for producing good-quality milk led to him and his wife Sally Kearney setting up Ireland’s first milk vending truck — a machine that functions as an individual modular unit.

“I grew up in a farming family but we weren’t farming ourselves anymore and we didn’t have any land,” says Michael, Bó Bainne Úr in Co Cork. “My dad passed away when I was quite young, so as I grew older, I rented farms around Clonakilty for nearly 25 years.”

Michael met Sally in 2009. She was a family support worker in Mayfield who had never stepped foot on a farm. But she describes his love for the business as infectious.

“In 2021, I saw a smart micro-dairy and a milk vending machine on an English farm for the first time. The idea of it seemed like it could work really well in our home town — Sally and I couldn’t stop talking about it,” says Michael.

Their first stumbling block was that they didn’t own a farm.

“Most of these mobile vending machines and smart micro-dairy pasteurisers are located on people’s farms,” says sally. “Milk vending machines in Ireland aren’t mobile — they are set up in farm shops.

“We only had a rented farm and we couldn’t operate from there, so we had to figure out a way to transport our milk around Clonakilty.”

The couple went looking for solutions and spoke to experts and other farmers from around the country find a way to bring the vending machine to their town.

“A micro-dairy like the one we wanted didn’t exist in the country yet, so we had to go through all the steps and the long drawn-out process that was necessary to get something like this to pass the regulations of the Department of Agriculture to be set up,” says Sally.

“Since this is a new method of pasteurisation for Ireland, it needed to pass certain health and safety regulations. These regulations were very strict.”

Two years ago, they discovered a Rotterdam-based firm called Unisun Energy with offices in Limerick that supplied smart micro-dairies.

“The company had come up with something new that they were trying to pilot which was exactly what we needed — a modular unit. It is basically a small container in the back of a truck,” explains Michael

“It is its own modular, pre-fabricated unit that would contain the smart micro-dairy. We would be able to extract the milk at the farm, pasteurise it ourselves at home and then drive the milk around in the truck and deliver it to different places around town.

“We made an arrangement with the company. Unison dropped down the unit and said if we couldn’t get it passed by the Department, they would take it back.

“The Department have forms that you fill out to apply when you start a business like this. But we couldn’t even fill out the forms because it didn’t exist yet. There wasn’t a box to tick for what we were doing!”

After they started working on the unit, the first regional officer who came to see it in early 2023 told the couple that they would not pass inspections with what they had built at the time.

“They were actually very good to us,” says Sally. “The officer was very interested in what we were doing and the novelty of it. He took one look at it and said we were not going to pass the way we it was.

“We had to add a lot of extra things like clean specific areas, install step-over benches, create some space for inspectors when they came over.”

Over the rest of the year, they worked with experts to bring the unit up to code. The initial unit was 3m in length, they added an extra 3m to each side of the unit to meet regulations. On January 18, it passed inspections.

“Finally, after Christmas, just as this year started, we made our first delivery — ours is the first milk vending machine of its kind in the country to have ever passed,” says Sally. “It’s been a long process but we are finally up and running.”

The truck uses the High Temperature Short Time (HTST) method to pasteurise up to 400 litres of milk at a time. In under an hour, it processes the milk into two separate tanks which go into the modular unit.

The tanks are wheeled out of the unit and into the vending machines inside the mobile truck.

“It’s pure-bred, non-homogenised Jersey milk from our own 60ac rented farm in Rossmore,” says Michael. “We have about 70 cows that are milked there. I have a special tank in the back of my jeep where I transport the 400L of milk to our house. It’s pasteurised here and then we take the milk around in the mobile truck.”

Bó Bainne Úr offers half and full bottles of milk, costing €2.50 and €3.50 each. The truck moves around a few locations, including the Clonakilty Boxing Club and Body Image Gym.

It has a syrup station, offering flavoured milk including Kinder Bueno, salted caramel, Nutella, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla.

“The response has been amazing, it’s made the whole process we had to go through so much more rewarding,” says Sally. “We sold out twice in the first week.

“People come out to the locations we are parked at and they seem delighted by the idea that the cows their milk is from are literally just a couple of miles out the road.”

The couple are working with other local businesses to bring their truck into different parts of town. Going forward, they hope to figure out ways to refrigerate the milk and supply to restaurants in the area.

“We hope people will keep supporting us because the milk comes straight to the people — it’s not travelling any other distance, it’s low carbon footprint and we don’t add anything else to it,” says Michael.

“We pasteurise it ourselves, it’s a 100pc the product you get out of the cow. What made us want to do this is the idea that it’s so local and fresh, and so far, our customers seem to feel the same way.”