Sharon Webb

Ice cream aficionados would sum up Ashgrove’s $2m redevelopment in two words – creamy gelato!

The gelato stand takes pride of place in the new building, which frankly, is simply more of everything. Larger windows into the factory, larger café, more outdoor dining, more Ashgrove products to buy, and curated tours for visitors.

For Ashgrove’s 81 year-old family patriarch, John Bennett, it’s been a long haul since he first helped produce cheese on a Cheshire farm in England 60 years ago.

‘We wanted to move away from Tasmania’s bulk export markets of that time in skim milk powder and butter.

‘Obviously you could make cheese on Tasmanian farms then but we wanted to make a business of it. Our only option was to buy land to obtain the economies of scale and to fund the capital we needed to start the business 40 years later.’

The Bennetts did some seriously planning in the 1980s and started up in cheese production in 1993. Since then, there have been four eras in adding facilities and automation, the recently opened Dairy Door being the latest.

‘I’m feeling very proud, and conscious that the future of Tasmania rests not with large companies but with companies like Ashgrove. Producing goods and allowing tourists to spend an hour or two here.

‘I’m indebted to my wife Connie, and Paul Bennett, who now runs the farm and chairs the company. 

‘Ann Bennett too, because the Dairy Door was her concept from start to finish.’

The Ashgrove Cheese company now employs more than one hundred locals, from farm hands to cheese makers, to the newest employed ‘retail superstars’ in the Dairy Door.