About Us

Yeo Valley Organic is part of a family-owned farming and dairy business that’s based in Somerset.

Its founders, Roger and Mary Mead began making yogurts, using milk from their dairy herd, in 1974, selling them to local shops.

Production of organic yogurts was started in 1993, when we were approached by a handful of local farmers who were producing organic milk, but had difficulty finding a consistent demand for it.

The first organic product, a natural yogurt, was an instant success. This encouraged Yeo Valley to look at the possibility of additional products, and also ways to encourage more farmers to become organic, so that an increasing supply of organic milk would become available to cope with growing demand.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history...

Today Yeo Valley Organic is Britain’s most successful and best known organic dairy company, with scores of awards for product quality and innovation and a Queen’s Award presented in 2001 for the revolutionary way it has worked with its farming suppliers, encouraging them to turn organic and giving them long-term contracts.

Here are some other milestones:

• 1995 Yeo Valley Organic launches its first fruited yogurt - a strawberry recipe.
• 1996 Demand for Yeo Valley Organic yogurts is growing so rapidly that the company moves to a dedicated organic dairy, at Cannington, near Bridgwater.
• 1999 The company wins six awards for its yogurts in the West Country Food Awards
• 2000 Yeo Valley Organic enters the ice cream market with a frozen strawberry yogurt.
• 2001 Yeo Valley Organic is presented with a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise, acknowledging the contribution it has made to the encouragement of sustainable farming. The company is also the winner of the Food and Drink Federation Food/ Manufacture Organic Food Excellence Award
• 2002 Yeo Valley is named West of England Business of The Year in the Price Waterhouse business awards
• 2003 The company is voted Best Food Company in the prestigious BBC Food and Farming Awards.
• 2004 Yeo Valley enters the cheese and liquid milk markets and its Mild Cheddar and Mature Cheddar are both winners in the World Cheese Awards.
• 2005 Yeo Valley’s position as Britain’s most popular organic dairy brand is confirmed with the successful launch of its new children’s yogurts.
• 2006 Winner for the second time of the Queens Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development.
• 2007 The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visits Yeo Valley Organic.
• 2008 HRH The Duke of Gloucester opens Yeo Valley Organic's carbon-neutral education centre, situated on its organic farmland overlooking the Yeo Valley.
• 2008 Mary Mead, co- founder of Yeo Valley, was named Farmer of the Year in the BBC Radio 4's Food and Farming Awards