The UK’s largest independent cheese producer Wyke Farms has promoted Diane Cox to the role of group technical director responsible for all business quality and technical functions.
Diane, pictured, one of the UK’s few female cheese graders, joined the Bruton-based business in 2005. With the dairy industry still male dominated, she is one of a very few women take the role of Master Cheese Grader, which she achieved in 2017. The year before Wyke Farm had insured her nose for £5m – so important was it to the buisness. 
Family-owned Wyke Farms, which has retail sales of more than £60m, is the only independent company in the top 10 cheese brands. It has been producing cheese for more than 150 years on its farm – today it is the UK’s fourth-largest selling cheddar, producing more than 15,000 tonnes a year.
Its products are sold nationwide through stores such as Asda, Co-op, Sainsbury’, Tesco and Waitrose.
It also exports to more than 160 countries, many with differing technical standards – making grading and quality hugely important to the business.
Managing director Rich Clothier, grandson of founder Ivy, said: “We will all be supporting Diane in building a team to support this growth and take advantage of the many opportunities in the UK and overseas.
“it is not about diversity box ticking, it's about diversity of thought on the board; something we need to be successful and something Diane brings in abundance.”
Diane spent 10 years being trained by Nigel ‘the Nose’ Pooley, who famously graded around 520m packs of cheese and butter in his lifetime.
Wyke Farms’ cheese and butter is made with milk from their cows grazing the lush pastures of the Mendip Hills in the centre of Somerset’s cheddar-making region.
Rich runs the cheese-making operations with his father John and brother Tom, while two other brothers – David and Roger – run the dairy farm.
The family is committed to sustainable farming and its cheese is the UK’s first national cheddar brand to become 100% self-sufficient in green energy.
The company sources all its electricity and gas from solar and biogas generated from the farm and dairy waste. The biogas energy is generated from its own anaerobic digester (AD) plant, which saves it more than 20 m kilos of carbon dioxide a year.
