Little dairy producer aims to hit the big time

The Little Milk Company was established in 2011, and is a co-operative of organic dairy farmers spread throughout Munster and Leinster.

What sets your business apart from the competition? Obviously we run a business, but you don't get into organic farming for the money. You do it for the love of it, and because you don't want to extract too much from the environment.

Also, a lot of cheddars are now made in a factory where they’re matured, packaged and put on a shelf as quickly as is physically possible. Our vintage cheddar is made in the traditional way: hand-turned and matured for a minimum of 18 to 24 months. It gets time to have a personality – that’s why we’re winning awards.

What's the biggest mistake you've made in business? At the start we focused on our product, but we didn't put as much time and thought into the packaging part. The quality of the milk and the cheese has always been brilliant, but we expected it to sell itself. For the first-time buyer who hasn't tried your product before, the outside packaging is almost as important as the product in their decision-making. So if we could change anything, we would have put a little more time and effort into the presentation.

And your major success to date? Last year, one of our cheddars won the top prize for "Best Organic Cheese" at the British Cheese Awards. To do that in the UK, the home of cheddar, was amazing. But there's no day that you sit back and say: "That's it done now. We're a success." It's about celebrating all the little victories.

What advice would you have for someone starting out in business? People buy from people. You can email, tweet, use social media and all that, but nothing beats shoe leather – getting out and actually meeting someone. If you create a connection with people, then all of a sudden your product is on the shelves.

Who do you most admire in business and why? A guy that I would admire hugely in business is John Purcell. He runs Good Herdsmen which produces organic meat and exports it across the world. It's a small Irish business, not grabbing the headlines, yet it's a player on the world market. They're doing it quietly, without any great fuss.

Based on your experience in the downturn, are the banks in Ireland open for business to SMEs? Getting funding from the commercial lenders is difficult. The banks haven't turned us down, but we've sometimes had to jump through more hoops than a circus horse to get the money physically into the bank account. You might get a letter of offer with conditions on it, but once you've met those conditions there's another set of conditions. It goes on and on.

What one piece of advice would you give to the government to help stimulate the economy? Having a fund to help businesses expand is key. Small Irish businesses are the biggest employers in the State, and the more sustainable way of creating jobs. Helping them expand would be a good jobs initiative, but it seems to be Frankfurt's way at the moment.

What's the biggest challenge you have had to face? Access to finance is the toughest thing. The sales were there. We believed in the product. The customers, the retailers, and the people giving awards believed in the product, but getting the finance behind us was still the greatest challenge. We all invested our own money in the business. Without that, we wouldn't be doing anything.

How do you see the short-term future for your business? This year we'll probably grow 300 per cent. There are three things we're focusing on for the next year: growing sales of products that we have in Ireland; launching new products; and expanding the export base in Europe.

The home market is the most important to us and always will be, but there are huge opportunities for us in the organic market across Europe.

What's your business worth and would you sell it? We wouldn't have an exit strategy but look, if somebody came with a huge cheque book it would be rude not to talk to them. Certainly, we'd listen to any offers – it would be foolish to say we wouldn't – but ultimately this business is set up to add value to the wonderful organic milk that we have and to develop a brand for the long term. In conversation with Caroline Madden