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Talking cheese are Caws Cenarth’s Carwyn Adams (r) and FUW’s milk and dairy produce committee chairman Rhydian Owen.[/caption]
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Meeting cheese entrepreneur Thelma Adams are FUW vice president Eifion Huws (l) and FUW president Glyn Roberts (r )[/caption]
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In the cheese shop - Caws Cenarth founder Thelma Adams with son Carwyn and FUW’s milk and dairy produce committee chairman Rhydian Owen and FUW president Glyn Roberts.[/caption]
The Carmarthenshire branch of the Farmers’ Union of Wales hosted a visit to Caws Cenarth – a family run business in the valley of the river Cych and the oldest established producer of Welsh Farmhouse Caerffili – to explore how the business once again is turning difficult times into opportunity.
Caws Cenarth was started by Gwynfor and Thelma Adams in 1987 in response to milk quotas. Here, on their farm, Glyneithinog, they drew on a six generation tradition of cheese making and quickly established a reputation for its creamy, fresh-flavoured Caerffili.
Thelma soon became a leading light in the renaissance of Welsh artisan cheese making. These days, Gwynfor and Thelma take a back seat, allowing son Carwyn to run the business and indulge his passion for creating new cheeses.
Speaking about the business and milk quotas, Carwyn Adams said: “I took the business over in 2005 and we now employ 17 people, cheese is a passion for us and I like exploring new flavours and developing new ideas and that’s one of the key areas where we manage to draw the business in.
“Just recently milk quotas have been removed and now is probably a more appropriate time to have milk quotas in place than ever, especially if we look at how milk prices have dropped.
“As a cheese producer and milk purchaser, we need to stabilise prices for our customers. We are not looking for cheaper milk or more expensive milk - what we are looking for is proper value for the milk that we buy and a consistent price.”
The beginning of the year saw dairy producers in Wales waking up to the abolition of the European quota system that has operated to limit EU milk production for 30 years. While Britain remained under quota, the potential addition of more production to the EU milk glut had led the FUW to repeatedly express concern about further increases in price volatility in an already saturated marketplace.
“If milk quotas were still in place it might actually help control supply and demand dynamics, as opposed to just flooding the market. We do need to have another look at the role that milk quotas – or some other similar market management tool - could play,” added Mr Adams.
FUW milk and dairy produce committee chairman Rhydian Owen, who also attended the visit, said: “ Coming to see this small family business here in rural Wales was a fantastic opportunity. It’s an inspiration to see how they are progressing and looking to the future after quotas have been abolished.
“Diversification, just like Carwyn is doing here at Caws Cenarth, is one option for farmers to keep in business; now that the marketplace has become more volatile.
“It will be interesting to see what the European Union can do in the future by perhaps introducing a monitoring systems but bringing back quotas now would be very difficult and is unlikely.
“But stabilising the peaks and troughs of a volatile market is definitely something that the EU must look at, so that businesses like Caws Cenarth can continue to prosper. The union has long argued that it is imperative that processors work to prevent the type of boom and bust price volatility which followed quota abolition.
“Indeed, it is essential that transparency and fairness in the dairy supply chain is improved in order to allow producers and processors to be well placed to maximise those mainstream and added-value opportunities that are set to arise in the export market following future growth in the demand for dairy products.”
Speaking about the future of the business, Carwyn added that: “We currently produce the plain Caerffili, and other varieties such as Garlic and Herb Caerffili and Smoked Caerffili and have developed the Brie-like Perl Wen, a creamy blue, Perl Las, and Golden Cenarth, a washed-rind cheese with a powerful flower , which won the Supreme Champion accolade at the British Cheese Awards 2010.
“The future for Caws Cenarth is to look at expanding our product range and exploring other markets. I am not sure if we are going to get them available for this year but possibly for next year.
“We want to focus on a new cream cheese, and are looking at going into more of a catering aspect of it and we are definitely looking at the ethnic markets and producing cheeses that are sought after in that customer base.
“We will also be looking at using milk from different sources such as goats and sheep, which is an area that we would probably relish in because of the handling of different milk and expanding into another niche market could work very well for us.”
