Alvis Brothers

We headed off to Bristol to catch up with our first Nuffield Scholar and his family. John & Pauline Alvis and their two sons, Peter and Johnny. They live south of Bristol at a little village called Redhill. They are dairy farmers with a great model of circular integration.

Lye Cross Farmshop

Home of

West Country Farmhouse Cheeses

The company of Alvis Brothers runs a number of other identities which all integrate well. They currently run three dairies in the area with 1 being organic. The milk is all delivered to the cheese factory behind the shop complex and is made into a range of hard cheeses. The bi-product of the cheese making progress is whey which is further separated into protein powder and lactose syrup. This is pumped up to the companies piggery and utilised there. The pigs are sold with some coming into the butcher shop as part of The Farm Shop produce.

Cleaning Manure from Dairy

The manure and waste from the piggery is spread onto the paddocks as is the dairy waste. The cows are housed for six months and for the rest of the year are outdoors on the paddocks grazing ryegrass and clover based pasture. The farmland gets spread with manure every third year.
All of the paddock work including spreading manure, seeding and spraying is carried out by a contract company in which Alvis Bros have a 1/2 share.  The contracting company uses Moore disc seeder.

A Moore Disc Assembly

The Farm Shop is a key component to the Alvis Bros. The hard cheeses that they produce are sold in the shop which goes well  as there is a  large amount of passing traffic. Now that the farm shop also has a butcher shop and fresh produce including veggies, they have customers who travel especially to buy from them.

Alvis Bros supply Sainsbury's with the range of Cheddar's and other cheeses. Currently they sell 3 out of every 4 kilograms of Organic cheese sold in Britain. They make three types of Cheddar; Hard, Mature & Vintage. They also make Red Leicester, Cheshire,Caerphilly and Blue Stilton.

To be able to use the Cheddar name the cheese must be hand turned during the process. It also helps being in the Cheddar region.