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Head Office
Dale Farm House, 15 Dargan Road,
Belfast, BT3 9LS. 028 9037 2200
Brilliant we love your ideas – and we launch lots of them.
Just pop us an email to hello@dalefarmbrand.com and we’ll make sure the right person gets it.
Good question! Very simply it means dale farm is owned by the farmers who supply us with milk 😊 There are 1,300 of them! Our farmer owners receive the profits from the products we sell, and they have a say in how we build Dale Farm’s future. This structure means we are able to focus on creating a long-term sustainable future for the local dairy industry and many rural communities.
In Northern Ireland, cows consume a predominantly grass based diet throughout their lifetime. During the winter, when cows are housed to protect them from the colder weather, they consume a silage (fermented grass) based diet supplemented with concentrates to meet their nutritional and welfare needs. In Northern Ireland our cows consume up to 95% of their diet from grass. The temperate climate allows our farmers to make use of grass-based farming which provides us with the perfect environment for sustainable dairy farming. A combination of adequate rainfall and long summer days provide a long growing season with cows grazed outdoors for up to 300 days each year. Another reason to love this wee place.
It varies but at the moment there would be somewhere in the region of 120,000 lovely cows across our 1300 farms. Our average herd size is just under 100, and those small herd sizes means we know all our girls by name and can give them all the space, care and attention that happy cows need. And happy cows make better milk!
Mostly twice a day at between 5.30-6.00am and 3.30-4.00pm
Our fresh delicious milk comes from our local farmer owners - all 1,300 of them – so not only do they milk the cows, they own the business too! Our dale farmers can be found in Northern Ireland, England and Scotland.
Most of our dale farm products are made in Northern Ireland but we do also have production sites in England and Scotland. Our dale farm milk, cream and custard for example comes from local grassfed cows and is produced into the products you know and love in our dairy plant in Ballymena, Co.Antrim.
dale farm is an iconic brand locally and nationally and loved by the entire community. Because of that you should find our lovely dale farm products in almost all large supermarkets and neighbourhood convenience stores. If your local supermarket or store is not stocking dale farm, we want to fix that, so drop us a message and let us know what products you want and the name of your local store and will we do our best to get that sorted for you!
Yes we do, Fresh from Farm – Fridge. Discover the joy of opening your door to fresh dale farm milk and dairy on your doorstep every morning.
My Milk Delivery – is our local milkman delivery service, bringing the goodness of dale farm dairy products directly from our farms to your home. We have a wonderful team of independent local milkmen delivering every day across Northern Ireland.
Check here to find out if we deliver in your area. Then simply contact your local milkman on their number below to arrange your regular doorstep delivery.
Allergens within our products are highlighted in bold within the ingredients list. A ‘may contain’ list also relates to those that are handled within the factory.
The 14 allergens are:
We don't want anyone to miss out on enjoying our ice creams and we are happy to confirm the below dale farm Ice Creams are gluten free.
Pear Picking Porky/ Polly Pineapple/ Dale Farm Vanilla /Dale Farm Raspberry Ripple/Joker/Mr Frostie/Giant Bar/Rocky Rasper/ Helter Skelter/ Rapture Honeycomb/ Rapture Mint/ Rapture Vanilla/ Fruit Blast
We don't want anyone to miss out on enjoying our ice creams and we are happy to confirm the below dale farm Ice Creams are suitable for vegetarians.
Pear Picking Porky / Polly Pineapple/ Dale Farm Vanilla /Dale Farm Honeycomb/ Dale Farm Raspberry Ripple/Joker/Mr Frostie/Giant Bar/Rocky Rasper/ Duet Strawberry/ Helter Skelter/ Ice Break/ Giant cones/ Rapture Honeycomb/ Rapture Mint/ Rapture Vanilla/ Fruit Blast/ Twist cup
dale farm milk bottles are made from recyclable HDPE plastic and are 100% recyclable. Each carton is made from 70% new material mixed with 30% of recycled HDPE plastic. At our Pennybridge plant in Ballymena, where we process and pack our milk, 100% of the waste generated is sent for recycling and we're pretty proud of that figure.
All of our ice cream packaging is 100% recyclable with the exception of our lolly wrappers. Right now we are looking into an alternative to plastic lolly wrappers which is viable and practical for our ice lollies – and we are working hard to find the right solution - watch this space!.
We all want to do the right thing for the planet 🌍 dale farm is always looking at our packaging and production processes to assess our impact on the environment and be as sustainable as we can. We don't plan to return to using glass bottles as it isn't as sustainable as the lightweight plastic bottles we presently use. The plastic bottles currently in use at Dale Farm are 100% recyclable, accepted by all councils recycling streams and are reprocessed in Northern Ireland. It can be surprising to learn, but glass bottles are actually not a more sustainable option than using our lightweight plastic bottles. The process of filling large volumes of milk in glass bottles, collecting and washing them, uses a lot more energy than our current process. We thank you for your interest in this and hope you understand our approach as we endeavour to maintain our high rate of recycling at our production sites, whilst always striving to improve :-)
We all want to do the right thing for the planet 🌍 Here at dale farm we are always reviewing our packaging and production processes to assess our impact on the environment.
Over the past few years, the Blue Planet effect has highlighted problem plastics across the globe. Under the UK Plastics Pact, as of June 2021, it will become a legal requirement for us to remove plastic straws from all of our products, including our Sukie cartons.
The UK Plastics Pact brings together businesses from across the UK along with UK government and NGOs to tackle plastic waste. Pact members must eliminate problematic plastics from products to reduce the total amount of packaging on supermarket shelves. Check out the following link to see what other major brands have signed up to this initiative https://wrap.org.uk/taking-act...;
As part of our commitment to sustainability, we aim to replace all plastic straws within our business with paper straws by April 2021, ahead of legislation coming into force in June 2021. You will find plastic straws disappearing from all conscientious brands in the same time period.
By changing the straws on our Sukie range from plastic to new paper straws, we will be able to eliminate a total of 2 tonnes of plastic per year. Did you know that 2 tonnes is equal to the weight of 3 dairy cows, and we are happy to be doing our bit. We have also updated our on-pack recycling info to encourage users to push the straw back inside the carton once finished so that it can be recycled along with the carton.
We know change can be difficult, especially as our iconic Sukie cartons have been around a looooong time, but we hope that you will continue to support local and help us protect the planet for future generations.
Did you know our Sukie flavours are also available in 500ml bottles and 1Litre cartons? *insert product pics* thirst quenching and better yet, no straws required!
dale farm has not updated its identity for more than 50 years. While we all loved the iconic dale farm hills, we all recognised that to ensure the brand continues to grow and thrive we needed to modernise, and we also have a great story to tell and our packs are a great way to tell that story. We have been working for many months, with the support of our farmers and consumers, to refresh our identity. We wanted to communicate that we are farmer owned, something we are very proud of and our consumers were not aware of, and we also wanted to modernise to ensure as a brand we remain relevant. Early feedback from our consumers has been really positive which is ultimately great news for the farmers who own the cooperative. Our new designs bring farming to the forefront of the brand and our packaging in a positive way for all ages and puts our mission as a co-operative brand, to share goodness everyday front and centre. Feedback is always welcome and will help us continue to shape this next chapter.
Our brand mission is to share goodness everyday. We are a proud supporter of a range of local grassroots sports, arts and community programmes and have a nominated charity that we are so happy to support. Please do get in touch and we will do our best to support, and if our roster of community support programmes is full, we will certainly add you to our wait list and will consider all proposals in the future.
Our parent company dale farm group handles all of the recruitment across all brands and divisions. Please visit the group careers website here for more details at as we are always looking for talented people who share our values to join our team here at the dale farm group.
