Simon Weaver Organic, How a Small Cheese Business in the Cotswolds is Gaining World-Wide Success
Nicky Lowe • November 30, 2020
Simon Weaver comes from a long line of farmers. Based in the Cotswolds for three generations and farming in the South West since at least 1570 it was only when the family took over a nearby dairy farm in 2002 already in the process of converting to organic and close to Stow-on-the-Wold that Simon decided to make a bigger move towards organic farming.
Since then things have taken off. With the introduction of an initial soft organic cheese in 2005 organic products have expanded to include artisan award winning hard and soft cheeses with the range including a Cotswold Brie, a Single Gloucester and a new truffle Gloucester cheese. The business, which has grown steadily producing between 60 and 70 tonnes of organic cheese a year, has just sold a major order to the US for the first time and is currently looking at making the first ever organic artisan paneer cheese.
The organic cheese business is also one of only a handful of local cheese firms making Single Gloucester (Simon’s is organic). This cheese can only be made in Gloucestershire and must be produced from the milk of Gloucester cows of which there are now only around 700. It is one of only two British cheeses licensed to carry the newly devised DO label (Protected Designation of Origin) coming into place after Brexit, the other one being Stilton. ‘It’s a really old-fashioned cheese going back hundreds of years and is made using milk taken from cows later in the day.’ says Simon.
‘Live like you’ll die tomorrow, farm like you’ll live forever’ is Simon’s motto. As a result of this the farm’s 250 cows either graze in the summer on river meadows which have never been intensively farmed or during the winter months on higher ground nitrogen-rich clover meadows while their milk production is never forced. A small part of Simon’s herd is based on land owned by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and milked by robot and all the cows are forage based receiving only a small amount of concentrate feed. Meanwhile the energy needed to pasteurise the milk and run the creamery comes from woodchip, a renewable source.
‘You’ve got to know where your food comes from,’ asserts Simon. ‘And the environment is so important in the way we produce food and how we produce it so that it doesn’t do any damage.’
When Simon first started selling the company’s organic cheeses he pinpointed local farmers markets, restaurants and hotels before expanding into supermarkets including Sainsbury and then Tesco which has meant pricing the cheeses so that they don’t appear ridiculously expensive alongside their competitors.
‘The reality of Britain’s shopping habits is that 85% of people shop at supermarkets and buy their food on promotion. We need to remember that shoppers can currently buy French camembert for much less but there is no longer an excuse for us not to be eating more British food. We should take more pride in our own home food produced like other nations do,’ He says.
Asked if he thinks that it is realistic for small producers like him to supply into the public sector he answers, ‘It’s a much bigger market, yes, seemingly with opportunities but in both the hospital and catering sector there is too much buying power in too few hands and the culture of buying the cheapest possible food products has become engrained in the system. There needs to be a change here’. Is he worried about increased imports of food with different standards to our own? ‘I think we can win on standards but not tariffs.’ He concludes.
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