British clotted cream for Asia

British clotted cream is now finding its way into Hong Kong high teas and the coffee shops of South Korea, due to Wiltshire dairy product business Coombe Castle. The burgeoning world-wide demand for the cream has led to a re-think of packaging for Coombe Castle. The firm is now moving from using glass pots to recyclable plastic pots to meet consumer demand. It has received an £80,000 (€100,300) rural economy grant, administered by Wiltshire Council through The Enterprise Network Swindon and Wiltshire.

The money allowed Coombe Castle to bring forward its plans to invest in essential new equipment to improve its packaging and branding of clotted cream by five years. “The growing demand for our long-life clotted cream around the world has been astonishing,” according to Glyn Woolley, owner of the dairy products business. “The coffee shops in Seoul can’t get enough of our clotted cream and it’s already on the menu of the Beijing Raffles hotel and the Ritz Carlton Hong Kong where recent word of mouth from the chef means it will soon be served at the Ritz Carlton Shanghai,” Woolley says. “The Dutch and Americans love it too – although the Americans don’t like it with its traditional crust topping.”

However, changing consumer demand and the need to reduce weight for international distribution (not least for airlines like Cathay Pacific, which serves Coombe Castle clotted cream on its flights) meant the company had to re-think its packaging.

“We knew we had to move to offer a wider range in size of packaging, and from glass to plastic – but we needed to invest in the right specialist plant to do it,” Woolley says. By investing in new packaging and expanding to new markets, Coombe Castle hopes to safeguard its existing 30-strong workforce and expand to employ at least five more. Coombe Castle processes primary produce raw cream and also buys and sells cheeses through its distribution network. The business has helped other Wiltshire companies – confectionary, jams, pickles and biscuits – to get into export markets by ‘piggy-backing’ their products to the US.