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First Milk’s Haverfordwest creamery in West Wales has won a prestigious award for its Afon Cleddau Extra Mature Cheddar, made for Tesco.

The cheese topped the traditional cheese category in The Grocer magazine’s Own Label Excellence Awards, which are designed to recognise the trendsetters and innovators in food manufacturing, who are raising the standards of own-label quality and value. The Grocer is the leading trade magazine for the food sector.

Afon Cleddau, which fought off four other finalists to lift the trophy, is created by the First Milk team at Haverfordwest and is produced with milk from over 300 farmer members, who farm within a 30 mile radius of the creamery. The cheese is currently stocked by Tesco, ASDA and Somerfield.

Paul Rowe, general manager at Haverfordwest, paid tribute to his 67-strong team at the creamery: “This success is independent endorsement of the great quality cheese we are producing at Haverfordwest. Each of the team plays their part in producing the highest quality products for our customers and we are all very proud of our achievement.”

Notes to editors
First Milk is the largest dairy farmer co-operative in the UK. Its members’ farms stretch from Central Scotland to the South of England, and from West Wales to East Anglia. The business has three divisions: Milk Operations; Cheese; and Ingredients.
Milk Operations handles approximately 1.8 billion litres of milk per annum from around 2600 producers. This milk is supplied to First Milk's cheese business and to many of the leading names in the industry. The First Milk Cheese Company is the largest UK-based cheese supplier. First Milk's Ingredients business supplies a range of customers with milk powder and whey products for functional foods, protein drinks, pro-biotics, pre-biotics.
The Haverfordwest creamery has been at the Merlin's Bridge site at Haverfordwest since 1930 and commenced manufacturing cheese in the early 1960’s. Currently, the creamery produces over 20,000 tonnes of cheese for a number of major retail customers including Morrisons, Tesco and ASDA, in addition to 35,000 tonnes of whey products.

For further information:
Paul Flanagan 07767 241452