Business and Policy April 2026 – Digital Dairy Chain – Maker Spaces
2 April 2026Are you making the most of the resources you have available or making the best margin you can on your farm or croft produce?
With part of the focus of future agricultural policy agricultural policy under the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 being for the production of high quality food and to enable rural communities to thrive; the Digital Dairy Chain offers any business or individual involved in the dairy supply chain across Cumbria, South and West Scotland a range of services to support innovation and productivity through collaboration.
Originally a five-year UK Research & Innovation funded project, with a budget of £21 million to transform the dairy sector in the region; due to the success of the project, it has been extended by a further year, now ending in early 2028.
Maker Spaces
With the project partners focused stimulating research and new product development, supporting business growth and attracting talent and skills across the region; the Digital Dairy Chain have created 3 bespoke ‘Maker Spaces’ in Cumbria, Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway. Each maker space comprises of two types of facility:
- New product development (NPD) kitchen / lab
- Commercial / industrial facilities
If you are looking to diversify and to add value to your dairy business or offer more products through your farm shop/café; Maker Spaces can provide the facilities to develop new products. With this in mind, the three Maker Spaces differ slightly in what they can offer both in terms of product development and scale of development:
- The Ayrshire Maker Space is essentially a new product development (NPD) kitchen with small scale cheese, butter, yoghurt, ice cream trials etc.
- The NPD lab facility at the new Dairy Research and Innovation centre located at SRUC Barony campus is also a NPD space for smaller scale cheese, butter, yoghurt, ice cream trials.
- The Cumbria maker space is a larger, factory style maker space located at Appleby Creamery predominantly focussing on cheese production.
As not everyone is able to leave their farm or business for the day, the Maker Space project co-ordinator can bring along dairy processing equipment to carry out trials at your premises or farm.
Types of Businesses the Maker Space can Support
While initially the project was focused on trialling new dairy products; more recently, to support more businesses, and in turn, further support businesses in the dairy industry throughout the project region; the project co-ordinator, Mark Robertson has broadened the scope of the project to include producers who use dairy as a main ingredient.
This has allowed the project to support more farmers wishing to diversify or wishing to diversify further as well as food and drink startups, food and drink entrepreneurs, chefs, SMEs, and anything in between.
Over the past year, the maker space work package has supported over 30 businesses and/or individuals with >12 hours support. Within that time, 8 new products have been launched to market with another 9 very close to launching.
How to Get Help for Your Own Business
If you have an idea of a potential new dairy-based product or are looking for ideas of how you can add value to your business; getting help is simple; if you are based in Cumbria, Ayrshire or Dumfries and Galloway, just get in touch. We can explain the range of product development that is possible through the project, how the process works and what support is available through the Maker Spaces project and the wider Digital Dairy Chain.
Mark Robertson, mark.robertson@sruc.ac.uk ; 07833347588
Project Co-ordinator
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