A Cumbrian dairy business has just invested in a new bottle-filling line.

And, in an unusual case of altruism, it has pledged to pay its hard-pressed farmer suppliers above the market rate for their milk.

North Lakes Foods, based at Gilwilly Industrial Estate, Penrith, supplies fresh milk, flavoured milk, cheeses, yoghurt, butter, cream, eggs, fresh orange juice and bottled water.

Customers include the likes of Westmorland Services at Tebay, Pioneer Foods in Carlisle, convenience stores, hotels, and dozens of doorstep milk rounds.

It also has a long-standing contract with Cumbria County Council to supply milk to schools and care homes.

School milk used to be packaged in waxed cardboard cartons.

But the council asked for North Lakes to switch to plastic bottles, which are more hygienic, easier to recycle and less prone to leaks.

Managing director Wayne Jackson said: “The council has been saying for the last few years that they would prefer us to use plastic.

“It has always been our policy to listen to our customers and at all times try to meet their requirements.

“Plastic bottles are much easier to recycle than was the case when we started the contract, certainly easier to recycle than waxed cardboard. And apart from recycling, there can be issues with cardboard if the cartons are stacked up and get squashed.”

A 189ml plastic-bottle filler was installed over the school half-term holiday in February, to avoid disruption to the contract, with a grant through Cumbria Business Growth Hub covering 20 per cent of the cost.

The £120,000 project also involves drilling a borehole to take water from an underground aquifer.

Mr Jackson said that North Lakes Foods would continue to pay dairy-farmers above the market rate for their milk.

The collapsing milk price has pushed many out of the industry. There are now only 784 producers in Cumbria, down from 1,089 10 years ago.

North Lakes buys 100,000 litres of milk each week from four suppliers in Plumpton, Stockdalewath and two at Armathwaite.

It has worked with three of them for many years and has a vested interested in keeping them viable.

Mr Jackson said: “The market price now is around 19p to 20p a litre. We pay 23.6p but at one point we were paying nearly 35p – it has come down a lot.

“We speak regularly to our suppliers and we’ve said that we’ll try to keep our prices up as long as we can.

“I don’t know of any other industry where the customer tells the supplier what they are going to pay.

“The [milk] processors say what they are willing to pay and the farmers have to take it on the chin.”

North Lakes is not immune from commercial pressures, however.

It lost a contract with a wholesaler in west Cumbria to a competitor that pays less for its milk.

The business was established 19 years ago by Robbie Jackson and Stuart Martin who sold it to the Dent family in 2004 only for Robbie’s sons, Wayne and Denver, to buy it back in 2014.

The company has an annual turnover of £4m and employs 26 people.

In recent years it has invested heavily in quality systems and currently operates the Safe and Local Supplier Approval (SALSA) quality standard.

North Lakes is not the only business to voluntarily pay dairy farmers above the market rate.

Supermarket chain Booths introduced a ‘Fair Milk’ initiative in 2014 for its own-label milk, pledging to pay more than other supermarkets.

Booths’ chairman Edwin Booth said: “As dairy farmers are under pressure, we guarantee to pay our farmers the highest market price for every pint of milk we sell.

“Paying the highest market price means family farms are able to keep going, invest in the future and spend more time and money looking after their herds to ensure they produce great quality milk.”

Booths is based in Preston in Lancashire and has seven supermarkets in Cumbria at Penrith, Keswick, Windermere, Kendal, Kirkby Lonsdale, Milnthorpe and Ulverston, with another planned for Grange-over-Sands.