A CIDER producing business in Herefordshire is providing new income streams for neighbouring farmers following the growth of their business.

Having already diversified the organic farm business, craft cider maker Paul Stephens and his family made the decision in 2023 to invest in refurbishing its on-farm shop and create a state-of-the-art visitor centre and café near Leominster, named Newton Court.

This was achieved with the help of funding from the Agricultural Mortgages Corporation (AMC), part of the Lloyds Banking Group.

Mr Stephens says: “We’ve been making cider on the farm for 24 years now. We started creating around 7,000L annually which we sold from the farm gate in the original small farm shop.

“Now we produce around 100,000L of cider a year, with customers around Herefordshire, the UK and Japan.”Having increased their cider production capacity, made possible from the investment in stainless steel tanks and larger production facilities, the farm now purchases up to 180 tonnes of cider fruit annually from surrounding farms.

This benefits 15 local farming businesses by offering them a valuable outlet for their apples and, for some, this has created new revenue opportunities.“We’ve been able to increase our production to meet the demands of the sales from our new café and visitor centre, and this growth allows us to buy more apples from local farmers,” explains Mr Stephens.

He adds that they’ve also recently had the opportunity to restore forgotten orchards to their former glory, by taking on a local orchard of Major apples, a rare variety.

“The orchard was in serious disrepair and hadn’t been used for a number of years. We took it on, pruned the trees, tidied it up and now we get a good harvest from it to go into our cider.

“I’m passionate about farming apples and think that traditional farming methods like this need to be preserved. By restoring this orchard, I feel we are keeping a part of our farming history alive,” he says.

“Hereford has a strong history of growing quality cider fruit as our soil and topography are perfectly suited to growing top fruit. We’re lucky to have access to a diverse selection of varieties, which gives our cider an edge, and it’s important to me that we can keep this going.”