Link Day 1
Charles Byrne, Head of Corporate Partnerships and Events at Macmillan Cancer Support says “This is an extremely exciting partnership for Macmillan. The reach of Dairy Crest across England and Wales, as an employer and a business, will be invaluable in helping us to reach everyone affected by cancer. The partnership will not only help to raise essential funds but also to raise awareness of the breadth of practical, medical, emotional and financial support that Macmillan provides to people living with cancer. This will have a real and sustained impact in local communities.

 

Make A Wish
Ashford depot’s successful Auction of Promises raised the money to grant a magical wish in the local area. Aaron, aged 13, from Chatham, Kent, had an exciting day when he was granted his very special wish to ride in a helicopter. Aaron, who is living with Ewings sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, was collected from his home in a Hummer limousine, along with his mother and father, sister Rhianna and brother Jordan, and driven in style to Biggin Hill Airport to begin his daring day out.

 

Link Day 1
A team from our head office in Claygate joined forces with our legal advisers Eversheds to spend a day painting fences and murals, and gardening for the Link Primary and Secondary School in Beddington, Surrey.
 

Community

We care about the local communities where we and our milk suppliers work and do our best to support them.

As part of making a positive contribution to local community life, we regularly support agricultural shows and livestock markets to help safeguard the long-term future of these traditional social events. Recently we have committed to the sponsorship of Hallworthy livestock market, which is important to a large number of our Cornish suppliers.

Attracting high-calibre young people to the industry

We also understand that it is essential to attract high-calibre people to the dairy industry, and sponsor two major awards for young people wishing to pursue a career in dairy farming. We are the main sponsor of the West Country Scholarship Fund, which is open to young people involved in dairy farming in the south-west. The Dairy Student of the Year award is fully sponsored by us. It is open to dairy farming students at agricultural colleges throughout the UK and is coordinated by RABDF (Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers).

At site level we invest a lot of time in supporting a range of initiatives and stakeholders. For example, we encourage employee volunteering as a way for our people to engage with their local communities and help good causes. We have not previously calculated the hours our people spend in volunteering activities, but we are now collecting the data and expect to include some impressive figures in our report next year.

Charity partnerships

Our employees choose a charity they wish to support. For the last two years they have supported Make-a-Wish, for which they raised a total of £635,155.60. This meant that 210 wishes came true, thanks to the generosity of our people and the individuals who sponsored them to walk, run, row and climb vast distances. Children went to Disneyland… met movie stars… took part in television shows… visited backstage at major theatres… lived like a princess for a day… flew in aeroplanes… watched their favourite programme on high-tech flat screen TVs… and much more.

After two years of supporting Make-A-Wish, we are now turning our remarkable fund-raising talents to the benefit of a new employee charity—Macmillan Cancer Support.

Macmillan Cancer Support is a leading cancer care charity in the UK. It seeks to improve the lives of people affected by cancer, along with their families and carers. Macmillan’s ambition is to reach all of the two million-plus people living with cancer in the UK—helping them to feel more in control of their future and have a better quality of life.

People working at our sites are constantly thinking of new and better ways of making a difference to our communities. For example, one of our people at Severnside came up with a fantastic idea: why not collect our used safety boots and give them to charity? Now all Dairy Crest’s used safety boots are shipped to Gambia for reuse.

Our employees are talented fund-raisers