Gill, 60, began making cheese when she was just nine years of age, helping mum at weekends and during school holidays. Today her two sons Matthew and Daniel are in charge of day-to-day operations. Her daughter Imogen is also involved in the business.
The family links don’t end there. More than half the milk used in its cheesemaking comes from the family’s own farm, run by Gill’s brother Andrew. It sits across the road from the dairy. All its goats’ milk is supplied from her niece Nicola, who has 1,000 of the animals nearby.
Butlers also buys milk from another six farms in a ten-mile radius. Two are run by cousins and nieces and the others from non-relations who Gill calls “part of our farming family”.
Today Butlers employs 100 people at its Inglewhite dairy and an operation in Longridge. With a £14m annual turnover the business, which produces almost 1,000 tonnes of cheese a year, supplies all the main UK food retailers. Marks and Spencer is its biggest customer and a “strategic partner”.
The Butler family has played a significant role in the local community, from installing broadband cabling to supporting local schools and universities. Gill is an ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ at Lancaster University Management School and sees herself doing more of that in the future.
We’ve survived the war and foot and mouth, we’ve survived different difficult situations and times, and we will survive this
However, she agrees that cheesemaking is “her passion”. And she has an unrivalled knowledge of Lancashire’s cheesemaking history, from the days when every single farm in the area was involved, through to the Second World War and its production restrictions and the large industrial creameries that followed in the 1950s and beyond.
Both had a negative impact on Lancashire’s traditional cheesemakers and the fightback has been a long process. She says: “It wasn’t until the 1960s that people really started to use the traditional recipes again.”
Gill remains on a mission to spread the word about Lancashire cheeses far and wide and to highlight their difference to the white crumbly, mass- produced product that most people associate with the county. She points out that the ‘crumbly Lancashire’ found on supermarket shelves was only created in the post-war years.
As well as its Tasty and Creamy Lancashire varieties, Butlers’ products include the distinctive Kidderton Ash goats’ cheese. The dairy has a host of top industry awards to its name as the mission continues. Gill says: “It is all about introducing people from outside Lancashire to what we do.”
She explains that its famous Blackstick’s Blue cheese, now a firm favourite in UK households, has opened doors nationally for the business.
More new products are on the way, including an extra-aged traditional Lancashire that’s set to find its way onto the shelves at Booths supermarkets shortly.
Gill says: “Lancashire’s cheesemakers have gone from strength to strength. What we produce is interesting, it is different. We’ve had to be more creative in order to grow our own markets
“We’re all within five miles of Beacon Fell and we are all friends and tremendously passionate about traditionally made Lancashire.
“Our plan isn’t just to grow, grow, grow; our plan is to innovate, innovate, innovate; and to keep providing for the people who are reliant on us.
“We want to make speciality farmhouse cheese accessible to more people. We haven’t scratched the surface yet. Lancashire cheese has a long way to go.”
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THE BIG INTERVIEW
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