Cashel Blue holds its place on the cheese board

Focusing on a quality product, branding and not over-extending the company is the recipe for success at Cashel Blue cheese, writes JOANNE HUNT.

'WHAT'S SO special about the cheese-makers?" asks a character in the film The Life of Brianon mishearing the Sermon on the Mount in praise of "peacemakers". But the ability of one Tipperary cheese company to triumph in a recession proves that blessed indeed are the cheese-makers.

For the Grubb family, making a living from an 80-acre dairy farm in the 1980s was no joke. With butter mountains and milk lakes dotted across Europe, they knew they needed to add value to the milk they produced.

And so Cashel Blue, Ireland’s first blue cheese, was born. Making cheese at the kitchen table and maturing it under the house, the Grubbs quickly realised they were on to something.

“Nobody made blue cheese on a farm in Ireland,” says Sarah Furno, daughter of Cashel Blue’s founder, Louis Grubb, and now both general manager and “cheese maturer” at the company.

With 25 tonnes of Danish blue cheese imported into the State every year, the family’s original objective was for its cheese to become an import substitute. By 1985, however, they were exporting to Britain. Marks Spencer became a customer in the 1990s.

But how does a company forged in one recession weather another 25 years on?

“We felt the recession bite in the US first,” says Furno of the ripple across the business in 2009. “It was just a straight reduction in the volumes going out.”

And with the Atlantic crossing an expensive run, delivery cost increased as volumes dropped, creating a vicious cycle.

An overhaul of its supply chain, however, has tipped Cashel Blue into growth in that market again. Once exported via the UK and grouped with British products, Irish Dairy Board support means Cashel Blue now travels directly from Ireland with other Irish products and uses dairy board marketing support on the ground to reinforce relationships.

“We’ve now got a target to sell 60 tonnes of cheese to the US this year; that’s nearly doubling our sales,” she says.

The effects of recession in the UK, however, are only starting to bite, according to Furno. While Wembley Stadium VIPs could last year enjoy a pear and Cashel Blue salad, Furno says she had some persuading to do when she met the ground’s executive chef last week through Bord Bia.

“He said: ‘I don’t think the timing is right for Cashel Blue; you are a premium product.’ Speciality is seen as fluffy, as an extra,” she says of how perceptions can change in straitened times.

“I told him we are a farmhouse product but we are a farmhouse product concentrated on efficiency. We haven’t increased our prices in three years whereas our UK competitors have.”

She says the problem is one of perception. “If on the one hand you work on retaining your authenticity and provenance, which they want, on the other, they can associate that with luxury and expense.”

With buyers under increasing pressure to be seen to be getting the best deal, relationships require far greater attention.

“We have to more actively manage the UK now. There are issues to do with perception and cost that aren’t necessarily founded, so that’s why communication is so important.”

At home, Cashel Blue has felt the pinch of fewer people eating out, with sales to restaurants dropping by 25 per cent. Tweaking its distribution structure to supply Tesco and Supervalu themselves rather than through distributors, Furno says this ground has been made up by increased retail sales. Today about half of the company’s cheese, 110 tonnes, is sold in Ireland.

Furno says the recession has coincided with a lot of other “coming to terms” in the company. Structural changes, including a succession process where Louis Grubb handed the day-to-day running over to Furno and her husband, as well as the completion of a new dairy in 2011, were major milestones.

Borrowing for the new building in 2009, Furno says that, unusually, the bank accepted the brand as collateral as it had a higher value than the farm.

From some 130 cows, a cousin’s 400 sheep, 15 staff and two generations of the Grubb family, the company’s turnover is €2.3 million.

About 50 per cent of Cashel Blue is exported and that’s where growth lies according to Furno.

So what has been the recipe for success?

“We’ve focused on the production of blue cheese, we’ve focused on branding and we haven’t over extended ourselves,” she says.

“We’ve gained quite a bit of experience in the past few years that is going to serve us well. We’re a relatively young and agile company, but with experience, so I’m quite optimistic about the future.”