One Team, One Goal

Our first presenter was Ed Salt, Managing Director of Delamere Dairy based in Knutsford Cheshire, who gave us an insight into his business and how his staff work as a team to achieve the businesses goals.

He stressed the need to give people a clear direction to avoid swimming around in circles. Delamere’s clear mission statement is deliberately down to earth as it’s written by staff themselves who decided how they wanted to be portrayed as a business.

Ed talked about the importance of culture: “We want staff to want to work with us so their working environment needs to be attractive and allow them to work to the best of their ability. We only had 11 days sick across the company last year.”

They also have very clear values – fun, healthy, responsible - that sit at the heart of the business. These come to life through their packaging, in new product development and the way staff deal with customers and suppliers.

“We only work with good people and I want everyone we work with to make money. Our approach must be right as we’ve worked with most of them for over 15 years,” said Ed.

Delamere started life as a farm with the purchase of three goats back in 1985 and now has an outsourced business model which follows trends and bases activity on demand rather than capacity. The result is a business with a turnover of £25 million exporting to over 30 counties around the work, which has won multiple awards.

Ed concluded with his views on the future: “1.1 billion babies will be born over the next few years and by 2050 food production will need to double. I’m very excited as I know everyone likes to eat. 30% of our business is plant based, but every area of production will grow over the next few years so everyone will benefit.”