MEAD Farm Foods has demonstrated its support for independent coffee businesses by agreeing to provide all the milk for the first Newport Coffee Festival in August.
The Monmouthshire dairy, run by husband and wife dairy farmers Lawrence and Izabela Hembrow, is standing by to provide the festival with some 600 litres of fresh milk straight from their 190-acre farm at Redwick, near Magor.
Izabela said: “I wanted to get involved with the Newport Coffee Festival as soon as I saw it mentioned on social media by organisers Horton’s Coffee House. It’s a perfect fit for Mead Farm Foods and a great opportunity for us to get our home-grown products out to a wider market.
“We expect to have to provide 600 litres for the day which equates to about 20 cows worth of milk.
“We’re pleased to be supporters as both us and the coffee businesses taking part offer sustainable products and to talk about our ‘fair trade’ milk.”
Izabela said: “From my point of view, I see this event as a great opportunity to promote our milk to the audience of speciality coffee makers.
“Milk is one of three main ingredients in white coffees but it’s forgotten sometimes. The ‘fair trade coffee beans’ term is used a lot as a marketing point in coffee industry but not necessarily ‘fair trade milk’.
“I’m personally a big fan of coffee and when purchasing a flat white I can’t resist to ask about it. I heard long stories about the coffee beans and the fact that people harvesting them are paid fair rates. But when it comes to milk, sometimes person behind the counter doesn’t know much about where it comes from and if it’s from sustainable dairy farm.
“Milk should be treated better than it is now, shouldn’t be cheaper than water and the end customer should remember that good quality milk is produced by well looked after animals which drink a lot of water to produce milk.
“There is a lot of ‘cheap’ milk on the market which is not easy to trace and is ‘cheap’ for the reason. Our milk is a free range milk, fair trade and it comes from the Mead Farm where is produced, harvested and bottled.”
Newport Coffee Festival is being held on Saturday, August 11, at Newport Indoor Market. Tickets, which went on sale this week, are £4. Proceeds from ticket sales go to Project Waterfall.
Festival organiser Gavin Horton, owner of Horton’s Coffee House, Newport, said Mead Farm Foods will be providing milk to the coffee roasters and coffee shops taking part on the day.
Gavin said: “We’re delighted to have secured sponsorship in kind from Mead Farm Foods. The milk the farm provides, which we already use in our coffee house, is better for ‘stretching’ and ‘texturing’, these are parts of the heating process that give the milk its micro bubbles and silky feel when drinking a coffee or hot chocolate. Basically semi-skimmed milk from Mead Farm acts like full fat milk from a supermarket.”