Latest News Headlines

Right Royal Celebration At Yeo Valley

It isn't known if the Queen starts the day with a Yeo Valley Organic yogurt, but Yeo Valley started the day with the Queen on Friday 20th July 2007, when the country’s leading organic food company was honoured with a visit by Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh.

It was the first time that the Royal family had visited North Somerset for more than 20 years, so a major occasion for the county as well the company.

After winning two Queen's Awards for Enterprise for its contributions to sustainable development, including the long-term, fair-trading support it has given to organic dairy farmers, Yeo Valley was delighted that the Queen decided to come and see for herself what makes the business, which is one of the few dairy companies to remain British and privately owned by its original founding family, so special.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were greeted by about 250 local school children from three primary schools, Blagdon, Ubley and Burrington, and guests who’d been invited by Yeo Valley to share in the day, before taking a tour of the dairy, situated in the middle of Yeo Valley’s farmland.

Upon her arrival two of the school children presented the Queen with posies Anouska Long (aged 5½) from Blagdon Primary School and Rebecca Fenn (who was 10 that day!) from Ubley Primary School.

Then Lady Gass, the Lord Lieutenant of Somerset, presented Mary Mead, Keith Watts, Tim Mead, Sean Page and Graham Keating. Other members of the Mead family were nearby and a final posy was be presented by Jack Mead (aged 7½) and his cousin Maisie Honey (aged 6).

The Queen requested that she meet as many people as possible so during the tour she met Blagdon Dairy’s senior management team and some of the product development team, which comes up with all of the new recipes the company produces and also checks each day’s production as part of Yeo Valley’s round the clock quality control system.

The Queen then saw Yeo Valley’s yogurts being made and packed, before meeting more of the employees there and along the way in the main corridor who were gathered in small groups representing different area of the dairy

From there in to the company restaurant, where organic meat and vegetables from the company’s farms are served, she met more Blagdon staff, together with some recent retirees and some of our longest-serving people.

The operations and engineering teams then greeted The Royal Party at the exit of the canteen before they did a short walk through trees to the farm driveway. Final stop was a visit to the surrounding farmland, where she saw some of the Lakemead herd of pedigree British Friesian dairy cattle, and was greeted by the conservation team before leaving in the royal Bentley for a visit to nearby Weston super-Mare.

Said Yeo Valley Managing director, Tim Mead: "We've always taken great pride in our two Queen's Awards, which we regard as being recognition that we are good custodians of the countryside and have been instrumental in encouraging hundreds of dairy farmers to become organic, which is also of benefit to animal welfare and the environment".

A rainy Friday ~ 20th July 2007

For more information about the whole day please click here.

For older articles, please click on the archive links to the right.