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John Drummond farms a 310 cow herd at Townend Farm, near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire via a typical 16x16 herringbone parlour cooled through ice banks driven by three compressors.

The farm is not particularly energy intensive and John adopts the usual recommended tactics to try and reduce costs such as energy saving lightbulbs. “There’s nothing particularly different or special about our parlour and bulk tank system,” explained John. The Drummonds were encouraged by their Area Manager Heather Wildman to look into procuring their electricity via First Milk Direct to see if savings could be made. After doing some sums – and then signing up to First Milk Direct – they are now achieving electricity savings of around £3000 a year – equivalent to around 3 or 4p per kilowatt hours, according to John.

He says switching was easy and would encourage other members to look into the scheme.

“All I had to do was sign the letter of authority, send a copy of our previous EDF invoice and the price was calculated from there. All the hassle of searching for the best electricity price was taken away,” he said.

“I just can’t believe what a saving we have made.”

Electricity is not the only service that First Milk Direct supplies to the Drummond family, who took advantage of the summer forward order discounts and purchased bulk sawdust at a discounted rate.

John has also found the First Milk cluster exchange scheme a big success. “The First Milk Direct cluster stood out straight away, the cows immediately settled as soon as the clusters were put on, they let their milk down quicker and have milked more efficiently – in fact saving between 15 and 20 minutes at each milking,” he added.

The Drummond family is so committed that they have recently purchased a new dairy unit and plan on extending its current milking potential by putting in a new parlour and building.