As part of a major rationalisation programme within Scotland’s cheese industry, Scottish Pride, together with SCWS and Unigate established the Galloway Creamery Company once more as a joint venture in 1990. The three shareholders had guaranteed buyers for its entire cheese output (Stranraer utilised 17% of total Scottish Milk supply and produced 18,00 tonnes of cheddar annually).
As a consequence of the joint venture, the cheese plants at Mauchline and Sorbie were closed.
Sadly, the ambitious hopes for this development were dashed in 1994 when the company went into liquidation. The Herald’s banner headline: ‘Cheese dream that turned sour. Now 130 workers wait for the inevitable’.
Many believed that the Government’s deregulation measures lay at the heart of the problem.
The response of Dairy farmers from across a wider area of Scotland was to initiate a campaign to save the creamery at Stranraer by forming a steering group to gather support for a management-farmer buy-out of the business.
In 1995 it was announced that a consortium led by A. McLelland and Sons, together with Murray Vernon Holdings Ltd. and the Farmers Creamery Cooperative Ltd had acquired the Galloway Creamery. The consortium was to trade under the name – The Caledonian Cheese Company Ltd. Its ‘milk field’ could be identified from the proliferation of company, quality assured signs at farm entrances throughout the Rhins and Machars.
In 2005 Lactalis purchased the Caledonian Cheese Company and its related business on the Stranraer site, McLelland Cheese Packing, whose portfolio includes the Seriously Strong brand.
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Billy McCrorie – geograph.org.uk/p/3678478