Crystal Springs Cheese 2.52

Crystal Springs Cheese
Established in 1984
Purchased business in June, 2005 (Originally operated from Rimby, Alberta)
Family business, with dad and 2 sons operating cheese facilities and another son operating a 100 head dairy herd. Over the past 10 years we have embraced the challenge of bringing the finest cheese into the market starting from scratch. Cheese making is an art, and there is always more to learn. Jacco and his wife attended a one week course at the University of Guelph in May of 2010. By attending this course we became aware of some key changes that needed to be made to our product so we could guarantee quality and consistency in every batch! We have managed to fine tune our products, learning from customer feedback and getting the feeling for making a consistent product. Every batch of cheese that leaves our plant must first meet our standards. If anything is not where it should be we would rather take a loss than risk losing our reputation. Our greatest pride is when we hear back from satisfied customers, be it from a large distributor or from a family that tried our cheese in their Thanksgiving meal.
We use all of our own milk, which is produced in our dairy operation next door. Our cows live in a low stress environment and are fed primarily Alfalfa Hay and oats silage together with some grain. The dairy herd is made up of a mixture of different breeds, since we are always trying to increase the milk fat and protein in the milk so that we can use less modified milk ingredients. Milk is pumped over to the plant daily and meets/ exceeds the standards set by Alberta Milk. All milk processed through our plant is antibiotic and hormone free.
The cow’s milk is used primarily for Feta Cheese, as well as flavoured Feta Cheese (Tomato/Basil, Herb/Garlic, Peppercorn and Olive), Regular and flavoured Gouda Cheese (Cumin, Jalapeno, Dill, Peppercorn, Italian, Chive, Cranberry, Mango/Papaya) and Cheddar and flavoured Cheddar.
Currently have 1 local goat milk producer. Goat milk is used for Soft Unripened Goats Cheese (Chevre) and Goats Milk Feta.
Our customer base is split between the Restaurant business and the cheese packing sector. Our biggest customer base right now is Vancouver/Vancouver Island where during the busy months we supply close to 20, 000Kg’s of Feta cheese/ month to various restaurants and distributors. On top of this we also sell about 12,500Kg’s of Feta to a customer that re-packs our product from its 11 or 12Kg format into retail sized packaging. Last year was our first year in the retail sector. We are currently supplying Sobeys with 1 sku 400g Goat Feta.
Advantages:
Family owned and operated
Product has top of the line consistency and quality
CFIA Inspected: Federal license. We have capacity to supply Canada wide
HACCP Program under development

Currently we are also selling our products in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec (Mostly Foodservice). Our products are always fresh, and we guarantee a 1 year shelf life for our Feta Cheese and 6 months for our Chevre.
Over the last years we have been working on expanding our Chevre market. We have been making this product for over 3 years now and we feel that we are ready to start moving some product at full scale volume. We are able to cater to individual customers: If a customer wants their chevre more crumbly, we can do it. If they want it more spreadable then we can do that. Also, if there are any problems, we do not hesitate to take our products back and ship new product with the same week.