AT WORK 1 2 cheese and
AT WORK 1 2 cheese and Emmental cheese are sold at various ages and currently, our sales hit is mountain cheese matured for six months. An absolute rarity is ‘Bergkristall’ mountain cheese, which is matured here for 24 months before sale. Not that the product is often available because our mountain cheeses are usually all sold before they reach this age.” PRODUCT IDEAS The Gunzesried cheesemakers cannot complain about lack of demand. “Sure, we could always sell a little more. But our limiting factor is the available grazing land in the valley. There isn’t enough room for our members to expand”, the manager tells us. Despite this, the cooperative recognises the importance of having as many products as possible in its range. This thinking is behind the introduction of cheese sauces and soups sold in glass jars. Relatively new in the range is the coop’s own ice creams, which are already selling well. “We came on these rather by coincidence”, recalls Peter Haslach. “We had to buy a new pasteuriser and, at the equipment dealership, there was an ice cream machine on sale directly alongside. So we staged a trial with some of our milk made into ice cream by another company. This was then served as dessert at a meeting of our members. It was an immediate hit. So much so that we bought a machine of our own and tried out various recipes. Now, we make a total 10 flavours which we alternate regularly. A speciality of ours is ‘Nagelfluh’, so named because it looks like a sort of stone found here that bears the same name, which is also what our local mountain range is called: the Nagelfluhkette. Giving this ice its unique similarity to the local rock are ingredients including three different chocolates, cranberries and a mix of nuts.” HIGH DEMAND The dairy cooperative products are mostly sold in the organisation’s own shop with some retailed through regional outlets. “The direct sales were of secondary importance to begin with”, says Peter Haslach. “The customers marched through the cheesemaking area because our sales counter was right at the back. In time, this situation no longer satisfied the official hygiene requirements. Nowadays this is acceptable but earlier our membership did not agree at all with the restrictions. However, the first real shop, opened in 1997, brought us many possibilities. “Important for us is being able to offer good value for money. That we achieve this aim is regularly confirmed by our customers. The cheese retailers in the towns have much higher prices. But of course these businesses involve ‘middlemen’, which we don’t have. And naturally we also profit greatly from the holidaymakers coming into our region. They buy directly in our shop but often afterwards continue as customers through our website. Incidentally, we were able to completely compensate for the corona-caused drop in our 2020 sales through the increases in our Internet sales.” Admittedly all this marketing requires extra effort by the coop staff. After all, the cheese not only has to be packaged and posted, payment arrangements are also important so that purchase is as simple as possible for the customers. “Alongside PayPal, credit cards or bank transfer can be used with us. We may be a comparatively small trader, but this doesn’t stop us being compared with the very large players on aspects such as ease of payment.” The easy trading opportunities at Gunzesried Sennerei are now also enhanced by a cheese selling automat on-site so that purchases can continue after shop closing times. WHEY BIOGAS This sennerei is also now well-known far over the regional borders because of a special pilot project: a plant fermenting whey to produce biogas for heat and electricity. “Earlier, our by-product whey went as feed to a pig producer,” explains Peter Haslach. “But there came a time when this outlet no longer existed - and then we had a problem. We even thought for a while of starting our own pig feeding 40
1 At Gunzesried, cheese production is a combination of handcraft and technology. 2 Immediately recognisable: here’s where the mountain cheese is created. 3 3 A robot has joined the labour force to help in caring for the maturing cheeses. Here the robot works on its own withdrawing cheeses from the racks. enterprise. But that would have brought new problems such as where to dispose of the manure. We don’t have the available field area here in the valley for this. We also discussed building a whey drying plant. Finally, we CALLING-IN ON THE SICHLERS Before visiting the Gunzesried Sennerei, we made a short stop at the first farm on the right just at the beginning of the village. With his wife Ines, coop director Martin Sichler farms nearly 30 ha of pasture. On top of that, his 27 cows and followers have access to mountainside grazings. Notable on our tour of the farm was the well-ventilated livestock barn, the excellent hay quality and the top class cattle. The Sichlers are dedicated Braunvieh breeders and so the family’s favourite came upon the idea of generating gas from our whey. This was not so easy to realise. On a large scale there would have been little problem. But with a plant as small as ours the situation was unique.” cow had to be included in the photo. Average milk lactation per cow here is 9,300 kg at 4.2 % fat and 3.7 % protein. Production rations comprise barndried hay, grass cobs and concentrate feed. For forage harvesting, the family uses Krone equipment exclusively, working with the local dealership Gruma. Part of the farm business are two holiday flats and a guest room for tourists. On the summer grazings, a 26-bed hostel also offers group accommodation. Innes and Martin Sichler run their dairy farm in Gunzesried. Stocking: 27 milkers plus followers. Following a long learning process taking around three years, everything now functions perfectly, says the manager. First steps included finding out the right amount of whey to be regularly fed into the fermenter. The pH had to be exactly right, too. “Then in winter we found that it was simply too cold for the bacteria to thrive. Nowadays, though, we produce gas to generate 30 kW power fuelling our high-pressure steam boiler. If we need more fuel, we can simply transfer to liquid gas. Whey fermentation residue can be easily disposed of through the sewage system.” Including three people in production and the manager, a total 24 staff work at Gunzesried Sennerei. There are naturally part-timers employed too. In a community with less than 500 population the plant is an important regional employer. But the main aim of the cooperative is ensuring an acceptable milk price for its members. Certainly, investments must be made, too. On the other hand, a profit after costs is not so important in this case. The manager says the price paid to the milk producers is akin to that for organic milk elsewhere, although all milk is produced under conventional management. The number of cooperative suppliers has remained very stable nowadays. The tourist trade in the valley helps the farms with additional income and so effectively avoids any further structural changes. Back in the 1920s, there were 40farms supplying the coop. « 41
