Our Story

When Barrys Bay Cheese produced its first cheddar in 1895, it was just one of nine small, family-owned dairy cooperatives dotted around Banks Peninsula. Life was quite a challenge then, so the original hard doers at Barrys Bay weren’t alone in turning their hand to create something useful from an abundant natural resource. One by one, those little family dairy businesses eventually fell by the wheyside, so to speak, leaving the Barrys Bay factory near Duvauchelle as the last outpost of traditional cheese making on the Peninsula. To ensure the continuation of our cheese making tradition, we built a new factory at Barrys Bay in the early 1950s, the very same factory you pass today on your way to Akaroa. Never swayed by the mechanical temptations that would most certainly have changed the course of our history, we’ve persevered with original cheesemaking methods. All the extra work requires a fair amount of time and love, and perhaps a little stupidity to keep doing things the hard way. But then, after more than a century of doing what we do (and love), we’ve come to know that sticking to our knitting makes a fine cheese.