Cereal processing business, Silvery Tweed Cereals, is enhancing its customer offering by bringing the family farm into its Northumberland cereal and seed processing operation.
The fifth-generation family business, which processes, manufactures and supplies cereal and seed ingredients to leading names in the baking and cereals industries from a base in Berwick-upon-Tweed, has also been farming since the 1930s.
Now, the business will source and process crops grown at the family farm – The Mead – for use in both new and established product ranges, as well as giving customers the ability to grow bespoke trial crops for new product development.
The company has long put sustainability at the heart of the business and champions the ‘field to fork’ ethos. For many years, Silvery Tweed has sourced the majority of its grains from farms and merchants within a 40-mile radius of Berwick, supporting local suppliers and promoting produce grown in the region.
Located ten miles from Silvery Tweeds processing facilities, the team at the 750-acre farm is currently growing wheat, barley, rye, linseed, and spring oats, with crops due to start being harvested in late July.
Its proximity to the Silvery Tweed headquarters will also help reduce carbon emissions and the road miles produce travels to reach the factory.
The Mead is also home to 300 sheep and 150 cattle, whose feed incorporates by-product from the ingredient cleaning and manufacturing processes at the Silvery Tweed factory, producing manure that is vital to maintaining and improving long term soil health at the farm.
Managing Director, Robert Gladstone, said, “Bringing The Mead into the business is an exciting addition to Silvery Tweed. It allows us to enhance our offering to customers by bringing together the experience of our NPD department with our highly knowledgeable farm team. Working together, they can determine the required variety, specification and acreage for planting and growing a trial crop to meet the customer’s exact needs, which will be harvested and further processed at our factory ahead of bespoke product development.
“As well as trial crops, The Mead supports our sustainability goals as a business and in time will reduce our reliance on sourcing certain products from outside the UK as we scale up production with other growers in the local area.”
The decision to make The Mead part of the Silvery Tweed operation has included significant investment in machinery, buildings and wider farm infrastructure.
The Mead was bought and extended to 150 acres in the 1930s by the Gladstone family, who own and run Silvery Tweed Cereals. They purchased the neighbouring farm in the 1960s, adding a further 120 acres of land. The farm remained at that size until 2021, when a further 505 acres were added to the portfolio.
The Mead is now fully operational, with its next harvest of crops due to start in late July. You can find out more about The Mead on the Silvery Tweed website.