17 Dec Customer Case Study – Dale Farm

Dale Farm is Northern Ireland’s largest Farmer-owned Co-op, and the 1,300 farmers that Dale Farm collect milk from, own the company.

Employing over 1,200 people across the UK and Ireland, Dale Farm is one of the most expansive dairy companies in the UK. The business spans the food chain, from animal feed to collecting milk from farms, from processing products to store delivery. Dale Farm dairy is supplied to retail, food service and ingredients markets in more than 45 countries.

Gray & Adams spoke with Adrian Currie, Group Transport & Fleet Manager at Dale Farm,

“The relationship with Gray Adams spans more than 40 years and long before my time with the company. We use Gray & Adams solely for our fleet of twenty refrigerated trailers and sixty refrigerated rigids ranging from 7.2 tonnes to 26 tonnes.

When we first started working with Gray & Adams, Dale Farm milk was stored in glass bottles and transported in plastic crates. They supplied us with unique custom-built sliding-side door trailers to transport the crates to the various depots. We have now moved from glass to plastic bottles, which are placed on wheeled trolleys and transported in conventional fridge trailers or rigid bodies with a tail lift. It is imperative that the vehicle transporting our milk must be robust to take the day-to-day loading/ unloading of the heavy-wheeled trolleys and Gray & Adams provides us with a vehicle that does just that.

We typically keep our rigid body vehicles for seven years and our trailers for ten, and even after this time in service we still have a high-quality vehicle to sell. Gray & Adams quality is second to none.

When working on a new project with Gray & Adams, we always receive a first-class service, from drafting the technical specifications through to production and after-sales care. We recently approached them to design a body for a new 12tonne vehicle for school deliveries that would match our requirements, from listening to what we needed, the design, production and delivery service was seamless, resulting in a vehicle that suits our needs perfectly.

We entrust Gray & Adams to maintain, service and repair all Dale Farm tail lifts, rigid bodies and refrigerated trailers at their Gray & Adams Newtownabbey site and this helps us meet our operational and compliance requirements.”