Cooil’s Dairy

What is your company name & when was it formed?

So we're Cooil’s Dairy Limited. We've been Cooil’s Dairy Limited since about 3 years ago now when my wife, Kirsty, and myself, took it over fully. So the company's always been the same principles, milk cows and deliver milk to the doorstep. The very start of it would have been Leslie Cooil in about 1942/1943 from what I can get from Ian and Gary Cooil who carried on from their father in the early 1970's. Ian would have been about 21, I think, when he took it over, roughly rough age. And Gary would have only been five years younger than that. So they were only young fellas, taking it over really. So like I say, it's always been Cooil, within the name because, obviously, our surname is Hargraves. That's Kirsty and myself, but we've kept Cooil as the known trading name.

Please tell us about your company

We milk a herd of a 120-130, yeah, roughly rolling average of how many cows we have in the herd. We obviously process our own milk and retail at the doorstep. So the milk is brought back to the dairy at Bradda where it's been for since the start of time, really. We obviously pasteurise it in there, And we make three different types of milk. That's the skimmed, semi skimmed, and fully the whole milk. And then we deliver it about a 1000 doorsteps.

We do three days a week, generally, as our delivery days, and it ranges from Monday right through to Saturday. Obviously, different areas vary in the days we deliver to. Three rounds do it. We've got two guys that deliver the milk. We've got Mark who does two rounds. So he does a round pretty much six days of the week. And then we Brian, who does one Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and he also washes the bottles for us. We have Lorna who, bottles the milk, And there's obviously Kirsty in the office and sort of all the admin and the accounts out, which is a and, well, Farm Assurance now has a big thing, so all the paperwork side is a a massive thing to undertake, and then myself and odd bits of help from people who help out on the yard at time to time. We also sell milk to the Isle of Man Creamery. So approximately about three quarters of our milk goes to creamery, actually, now, because we milk more cows. We've got more sort of surplus if you like, and then the rest goes on to the doorstep, where we actually, support that with eggs, cream, and potatoes as well.

Where you are / were you based around the island?

We're based in Port Erin, and we deliver our milk to Port Erin, Port St Mary, Colby, and Ballabeg. We have been asked to go further, but, we don't really, feel the need to yet. So we've got a quite a happy medium with the staff. So the requirements of it because whenever someone's on holiday or sick, I have to I have to do the cover on the milk crowns, so I'd be spreading myself a bit thin if we were to go a bit further.