MOSSGIEL Farm, located on the land Robert Burns farmed, was founded in 1948 but was rebranded as an organic farm by Bryce Cunningham in 2015. The business is on track to become the UK’s first plastic-free organic dairy farm by next month with its milk refill station and its dedication to using glass bottles.

Name: Bryce Cunningham

Age: 31

Position: Farmer

WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS CALLED?

Mossgiel Farm

WHERE IS IT BASED?

Ayrshire

WHY DID YOU SET UP THE BUSINESS?

MY grandfather came here in 1948 with 20 Ayrshire cattle to milk for the local community. He had 80 cows by 1993 and then my father took over. There were 150 cows in 2015 and then we discovered my father had terminal cancer and I decided to come home and help the family out. A year later my father and grandfather died and the milk price collapsed. I lost £10,000 in my first year. The bank wouldn’t give me money as a new farmer.

When I was younger I didn’t get on with my father very well. I worked in the motor industry for 10 years. I didn’t realise I’d take over the farm the way I did. When the bank pulled out it was an opportunity for change. When I was young I remembered how it was with only 80 cows – it was a more green and relaxed environment. Everything became efficiency driven to get every penny out of everything. Going organic felt like the right thing to do.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

I REDUCED the cow numbers down from 150 to 28. We started bottling milk ourselves.

We have 80 cows now and support two other family farms in Ayrshire as well.

We take the milk from the cow and pasteurise it slowly. We also keep the cream in it – a lot of milk going to supermarkets has the cream removed so that milk and cream can be sold separately.

Anything I had from working for Mercedes I put into pasteurising milk systems.

I got two investors and crowdfunded twice as well to improve the tracks the cows walk on in summer and this year we crowdfunded for glass bottles so we are no longer using single use plastic.

People want to know where milk comes from due to social media and the internet. We put the farm name of where it came from on the bottles for full traceability.

HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM COMPETING BUSINESSES?

THE farm is based on Ayrshire cows eating Ayrshire grass. We also do farm visits for the community. We run a dairy where the calves stay with their mums – we trialled this over summer and it went very well. We are also farming the land that Robert Burns farmed. We sell in Scotland at the moment. We have trialled going to London but it is expensive and we’re trying to do what’s best for the environment as well.

WHAT IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?

IT’S a wide range of people. What we specialise in is that our cows eat mainly a grass diet.

Our milk works well in the speciality coffee industry because it has cream in it so it sits there three times longer than regular milk.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT RUNNING THE BUSINESS?

I ENJOY going out and seeing happy cows. It is tremendous seeing baby calves born.

People are interested in what we do and stick with our milk. People contact us asking how things are which us great.

Rebranding the farm was very challenging to start with but there’s lots of support for start-ups and small businesses in Scotland.

We seem to have a lot of support from local politicians as well – we got mentioned in Parliament last week.

WHERE DO YOU HOPE THE BUSINESS WILL BE IN 10 YEARS’ TIME?

WE want to still have our farm and cows but want the milk processing business to grow.

The change in milk price was tough as my son had just been born and we were losing a massive amount of money. It felt like me and my son’s future was at risk.

I want to help other farmers instead of selling to multinational companies.

One of the farmers we help is very private and was reluctant to have his farm’s name on the bottle but last week he phoned me up and said no one had ever commented on what the product was like but now they had through social media.