It needs bottle to take on the big boys

FOR JOHN Coar and his family, the task of bottling and retailing milk has become a way of life – his grandfather did it, his father did it and now he”s doing it. He even met his wife delivering milk.

“There”s something about it,” says John. “I suppose it”s having the control of the whole operation from teat to consumer.”

John and his wife Elaine milk 150 Holstein Friesians on their 120ha (300-acre) farm at Balderstone. The herd averages just over 7000 litres and half of the milk produced is processed, with the other half sold conventionally.

“My grandfather used to bottle raw, unpasteurised milk and, because no one had any refrigeration, he would make two deliveries around the village, one after each of the morning and afternoon milkings,” says John.

“And then in my father”s time, tuberculin tested (TT) milk became a requirement. Everyone wanted this clean” milk and the demand for raw milk declined rapidly. As a result, father decided to sell the entire herd and start again with a TT herd bought from a farm in Scotland.”

end of raw milk

Pasteurisation became a customer requirement when his father was running the business, so a plant was installed in the early 1970s and sales of raw milk came to an end.

“In the “70s and “80s we were selling a lot of milk,” he says. “Whole milk was considered to be a healthy drink and the Drinka Pinta Milka Day” advertising was a powerful and successful marketing campaign.”

But, in more recent years, the demand for delivered milk has declined significantly. “The problem, of course, lies with the supermarkets. Where we used to deliver, say, three pints of milk every day to a house, we now deliver only two pints on alternate days. Folks tend to buy a large carton of milk when they make their weekly shop at the supermarket and rely on deliveries for the rest.

“But I think we can live with that problem,” he says. “The damage has been done and I don”t think it will get any worse.”

The time of day when the milk lands on the doorstep is now a crucial consideration. “With working wives and children attending schools, it means houses empty out quite early in the morning and they expect their pints of milk to be on the doorstep before they go. No one wants to see milk left out all day – particularly in the summer.

“This means we have to start deliveries from about 4am,” he says, “which is pretty challenging on cold winter mornings.”

Trends have also changed in the type of milk required, with semi-skimmed now outselling whole milk and demand for skimmed milk on the rise, says John.

“At least with skimmed and semi-skimmed we don”t get the cream-watch” brigade ringing us up every time the level of cream changes a smidge, which it does at different times of the year,” he says. “I know it seems sad, but there are people who actually measure the level of cream on the top of a pint of milk.”

Skimmed milk has a butterfat content of between 1.5% and 1.8%, which John achieves by blending whole milk with skimmed milk.

John still prefers to sell milk in glass bottles – each marked with his own logo – rather than plastic cartons because there is, he insists, more profit in selling milk in one pint glass bottles.

“In shops and garages I have to provide milk in plastic cartons at a price which competes with the supermarkets. These customers also prefer containers with screw tops and cartons which don”t smash if dropped.”

label sticking

As a result, a regular evening activity in the Coar household is the sticking of labels on plastic cartons with Elaine and daughter Rachael sometimes lending a hand.

“Our customers, while being very loyal to us, are also pretty discerning,” says John. “There are also matters of taste to be careful about.

“Changing the cows” diet from grass to silage when they are brought in for winter can cause some tainting of the milk and the change-over needs to be pretty gradual if complaints are to be avoided. And any temptation to feed carrots has to be resisted – they make the milk turn yellow which not many of my customers would appreciate.”

For the future, John is considering installing a homogenisation plant, which would solve the cream issue overnight. “It is the way forward in this business,” he says. “Cream, in my opinion, looks good in the bottle, but there is a growing trend against it.”

John also believes glass milk bottles could soon be replaced totally with plastic containers. “It will be a pity when it happens. The milk bottle epitomises, in many ways, the doorstep delivery, which is a very British institution.

“The one thing I am sure about is that the doorstep delivery will continue, and that is good.”