A WEST Oxfordshire pub has embraced a new idea which a farmer hopes will revolutionise Britain’s beleaguered milk industry.

The Kingham Plough has installed a vending machine which dispenses milk outside its premises near Chipping norton. It sells a bottle of Guernsey milk for £2 produced at nearby Nell’s Dairy, of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire.

Dairy owner Adam Fleming hopes the facility will revolutionise the milk industry.

Kingham Plough owner and chef Emily Watkins said customers and residents loved the vending machine and the unique milk which it vends.

She said: “It’s going really well and it’s really picking up. It’s totally different from your usual bog-standard milk. It’s really sweet.

“We use about 20 litres of it a week. We use it to make all of our desserts and ice cream, and I’ve just made my own clotted cream from it too.”

She said she hoped the use of milk vending machines caught on, to cut out the middle men and give farmers more for their product.

She said: “The farmers have been caught out so badly over the years.”

Milk farmers last month protested outside large milk distributors over falling payments to suppliers.

They said middle-men and supermarkets were paying 30p per litre for milk that costs farmers 28p to produce.

Mr Fleming said: “Watching what has happened to the dairy industry and knowing milk costs less than sparkling water, and yet is such a key park of everyone’s lives, makes me very angry.

“My son spotted a similar vending machine scrolling through the internet, and we thought about the fact we have a farm and we had always wanted to go into dairy.

“Milk vending machines are popular in Europe because you can bring your own bottle and you don’t have to worry about all the packaging.”

He said the dairy was not yet making a profit from the scheme because it had yet to be rolled out to enough venues.

But he said customers would not be put off the price tag if they valued the quality of the product.

He said: “Guernsey milk is something really special. People are happy to pay £2 per litre, and I think things are going to start to change.”