It’s hard enough to start a food brand from scratch – it’s even harder to make a success out of a company which was only initially created as a solution to a problem. The Cornish Cheese Company was first set up by dairy farmer Philip Stansfield and his wife Carol in answer to the collapse of milk prices in the 1990s, but now it’s an award-winning brand celebrating its twenty-year anniversary. This success is largely down to one cheese in particular: Cornish Blue, which made The Cornish Cheese Company a nationally recognised name. We spoke to the founder of the company, Philip Stansfield to find out more about this cheesemaker’s rise to the top and what he’s got up his sleeve for the next two decades.
The story begins in the mid-nineties, when Philip and Carol moved their herd of dairy cows down from Cheshire to a farm on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall to continue life as dairy farmers. When the price of milk suddenly dropped dramatically, they were forced to rethink they way they worked to keep their heads above water. ‘The farm we bought had an old bottling plant,’ explains Philip. ‘It was a building just not being used. So, we looked at how we could add value to the milk. We considered everything from bottled milk and flavoured milks to yoghurt and ice cream, but in the end, we decided to go with cheese. We knew nothing about cheesemaking but it used the most milk — it takes around 9 to 10 litres of milk to make one kilo of cheese — so you’re adding a lot of value in a smaller volume.’
Philip then returned to his old agricultural college in Cheshire to learn the art of cheesemaking. There, he met Chris Ashby, who led the course and offered to come down to Cornwall and help get things started. But before they could get started, Philip and Carol had a big decision on their hands — what type of cheese were they going to make? ‘We noticed there was no blue cheese being made in Cornwall, but at the same time we didn’t want to be competing with Stilton. A lot of the imported cheeses were softer, milder and creamier cheeses but there were very few English blue cheeses like that on the market, so that’s what we tried to develop.’