Limited Edition Billy Tannery Goat Desert Boot

New Made In England Desert Boots. A limited edition collaboration between sustainable leather company Billy Tannery and a Suffolk-based shoemaker.

www.billytannery.co.uk

May 2021… // Innovative British leather brand Billy Tannery launches a new unisex Desert Boot, made in England from its sustainable goat leather. The limited time collaboration sees this iconic boot style made for the first time in British goat leather, produced in the brand’s own small batch tannery.

“The Desert Goat” is available in three colourways - Chestnut leather, Black leather and a stunning Green suede. For £275 the boots will then be made-to-order near Woodbridge in Suffolk by master shoemaker Jadd Friedman of Jadd Shoes.

Billy Tannery began when founders Jack Millington and Rory Harker discovered that due to growing demand for goat meat and dairy in the UK, there were thousands of goatskins going to waste. Now, having partnered with ethical goat meat supplier Cabrito, Billy Tannery uses the leftover hides to produce goat leather in its own “microtannery”, based on a farm in Leicestershire.

Founder Jack Millington said, “Despite being an icon of British footwear culture, it’s sad that most desert boots are now made cheaply in the Far East on an industrial scale from materials that have circled the globe. We think your boots should do most of their travelling on your feet, so are delighted to launch these desert boots made just a couple of counties away from where the leather is made”

Download press kit here

More information can be found at www.billytannery.co.uk and on Instagram @billytannery

Billy Tannery was founded by childhood friends Jack Millington and Rory Harker, both 33 and from the Midlands. Their backgrounds are in marketing and design, so they had no previous experience in the leather industry. After discovering the terrible waste of goat hide in the UK, they decided that they had to act.

Billy Tannery’s range of products includes bags, wallets, aprons and regular collaborations in footwear, headwear and further afield. The brand offers a lifetime repair guarantee on all of its products in an effort to ensure many generations of use, which is one of the main factors in making a product sustainable.

The first leather brand of its kind in the UK, with a vertically integrated supply chain from hide to final product, Billy Tannery is able to offer something extremely rare - genuinely traceable leather goods.

Jadd Shoes was founded by master shoemaker and QEST scholar, Jadd Friedman. It is based near Woodbridge, Suffolk. www.jadd.shoes

Delamere is now supporting a fully sustainable cycle from food to leather

Jack and Rory from Billy Tannery

Delamere Dairy Invests in ‘Pioneering’ Billy Tannery

Delamere is now supporting a fully sustainable cycle from food to leather.

Delamere Dairy, the UK supplier of speciality, award-winning fresh and long-life goats’ products (milk, butter, cheeses and yogurts) has acquired a share in Billy Tannery, which produces a range of leather goods from goat hides in its pioneering microtannery.

Billy Tannery was founded by Jack Millington who set up the company, based in the Midlands, after discovering that not one goat hide left over from the food industry was being tanned in the UK. 

The tannery was set up by Jack after helping his dad, a dairy farmer, to try and find a market for his goat meat. Tapping into local leather knowledge it built a pioneering microtannery - the first tannery to be built in the UK in over 50 years. 

After enlisting the help of experts at the University of Northampton, they developed a bespoke tanning recipe to produce a sustainable, bark-tanned goat leather which celebrates the natural markings in the hide. The business then uses purposeful design to produce accessories including bags, sneakers and aprons in small workshops in the UK.

Cheshire-based Delamere Dairy, which is responsible for a third of the UK’s goats’ milk, now has shares in both Billy Tannery and also goat meat supplier Cabrito. Cabrito Goat Meat was founded in 2012 by British chef James Whetlor and sources its farm assured goat’ meat from Delamere Dairy farms across the UK, to supply restaurants, butchers and catering companies, as well as delivering directly to families across the UK. 

The interest and appetite for goats’ meat is growing in the UK. Previously billy goats were a bi-product to the 30,000 female nanny goats producing milk for the UK market. Supplying goat meat to restaurants and caterers and sending hides to the tannery, completes the sustainable cycle from milk to meat to leather in this small but dynamic sector of the UK dairy industry. 

Ed Salt, MD at Delamere comments: “We have developed a unique model for how dairy businesses should look in the future - honest, transparent, ethical and continually pushing for sustainability.  I genuinely feel we can create a model partnership with each aspect of these three businesses enhancing the other and reducing unnecessary wastage.” 

Jack Millington at Billy Tannery comments, "Our new partnership with Delamere cements the natural links with Billy Tannery and also Cabrito. The increased transparency between the three businesses is exactly what consumers are looking for these days and this is only going to increase in the future. I'm really looking forward to working more closely with the wider Delamere team."

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For more information about Cabrito Goat Meat please contact Hannah Blake on hannah@thediningroompr.co.uk or 07730 039361

For more information about Billy Tannery please contact Jack Millington on jack@billytannery.co.uk or 07958 001987

Notes to editor:

Delamere Dairy

Delamere Dairy was founded in 1985 in Cheshire’s beautiful Delamere Forest, when Liz & Roger Sutton bought their first three goats. They began by selling the fresh goats’ milk and soft cheese they made in their kitchen to local health food stores. Such was the interest in their products, that only a couple of years later they were supplying milk to major UK retailers. 

Today, Delamere Dairy sells an award-winning range of fresh and long life goats’ products (cheeses, yogurts, butters, milks and powder), plain and flavoured cows’ milks, a range of sheep cheese and yogurt, and a growing portfolio of milks for the pet industry.

More recent developments build on the company’s experience of supplying dairy alternative ‘milks’ as own label brands. In 2018 the company launched its branded range of Planted drinks, a planted based range of oat, almond and coconut drinks.

Celebrating more than 35 years in business, the company has an annual turnover in excess of £29M, with products sold throughout the UK and in over 20 markets around the world.

Delamere Dairy has collected several accolades over the years including Farm Business of the Year at the Farm Business Food & Farming Industry, the Sunday Times SME Export Track 100, as the UK’s fastest growing food & drink exporter, and UK’s most prestigious business award – The Queen’s Award for Enterprise, for its International Trade achievements.

Cabrito Goat Meat was founded by James Whetlor in 2012. Cabrito won an Observer Food Monthly Award (2014) for Best Ethical Producer, Good Housekeeping’s Champion Meat Producer (2016) and the Young British Foodies Meat Award (2016) and is a finalist in the Radio 4 Food Programme Food and Farming Awards 2017. www.cabrito.co.uk

Billy Tannery was founded by childhood friends Jack Millington and Rory Harker, both from the Midlands. Billy Tannery is a goat leather micro tannery that has tapped into local leather knowledge and built a pioneering micro-tannery with its sustainable, bark-tanned goat leather using the hides left over from the UK food industry to produce a range of premium leather goods and accessories. www.billytannery.co.uk

Dinner, conversation and sustainability at Coombe Farm Organic

Cabrito Goat Meat at Coombe Farm Organic

An evening of food and discussion with sustainability champions Cabrito Goat Meat and Billy Tannery at Coombe Farm Organic, Crewkerne, Somerset

Price: £60 per person for four courses and welcome drink
Booking via: www.coombefarmorganic.co.uk

On 3 April, James Whetlor from Cabrito Goat Meat and Jack Millington from Billy Tannery will host a dinner of British goat meat alongside Ben White, General Manager at Coombe Farm Organic, a beautiful farming estate in the Somerset countryside. All three partners are united in their passion for sustainability, the welfare of animals and reducing the waste in this part of the dairy system.

Very often the connection between meat and leather is forgotten. Independent producers, Cabrito Goat Meat and Billy Tannery, the UK’s first goat leather micro tannery, are working together, and with restaurants and farmers, to change this.

Certified organic by the Soil Association in 1998, Coombe Farm started out as a dairy farm and has a long and trusted reputation for exceptional diary produce. Now, they also rear organic grass-fed beef, lamb and pork and work with local farmers for organic free-range venison and poultry. Since February 2020, Coombe Farm has also been supplying goat meat (kid and nanny) from Cabrito, which comes from farms less than seven miles away on the Somerset/Dorset borders.

Ben White from Coombe Farm Organic comments; “Working with James from Cabrito Goat Meat complements our philosophy of sustainable farming really well. It yields truly remarkable meat that would otherwise get wasted. Whilst nanny/female goats are reared for replacements in a goat dairy herd, billy/male goats are surplus to requirements. We feel strongly that letting meat go to waste is unacceptable in an age when so much is already wasted and so many go without eating balanced, nutritious produce. Working with Cabrito, who in turn works with the brilliant Billy Tannery to use the goat hides, we have the platform to see that the billy and older nanny goats raised in out from our local area is used responsibly. The goats we butcher and sell come from a farm seven miles away from us on the Somerset/Dorset border and is a truly delicious and versatile ingredient to cook with.”

Billy Tannery is the first leather brand of its kind in Britain, with a vertically integrated supply chain from hide to final product. Co-founded by friends Jack Millington and Rory Harker, Billy Tannery’s goal is to put an end to the thousands of British goat hides wasted every year.

Jack Millington says, “Despite the clear link between meat and leather, the topic is often uncomfortable and rarely discussed. For us at Billy Tannery, leather and leathercraft play a vital role in the reduction of food waste - it takes the dairy and meat by-products and creates unique and sustainably tanned goat leather. It’s great to be on the farm with Ben and the Coombe Farm Organic team to showcase our British goat leather.”

Guests going to Coombe Farm Organic for this special evening will be welcomed with an organic apple martini and nibbles before sitting at 7pm for a short talk from James Whetlor and Jack Millington and hosted by Ben White.

The menu:

• Coombe Farm ex-dairy cow bresola

• Cabrito kid goat kibbeh nayeh with herbs and lemon

• Cabrito goat kebabs with romesco

• Marinated Cabrito kid leg and shoulder with preserved lemon and bay

• Tomato and cabbage pilaf

• Lemon posset and shortbread

Throughout the evening samples from Billy Tannery’s range of goat leather products will be available to view and purchase as will copies of James Whetlor’s award-winning book ‘Goat: Cooking and Eating’ which includes recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Gill Mellor and Gizzi Erskine.

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For more information, interviews or images please contact Hannah Blake at The Dining Room PR on 07730 039361 or email hannah@thediningroompr.co.uk

About Cabrito Goat Meat
www.cabrito.co.uk

Cabrito has a one-sentence mission statement: to put all billy goats born into the dairy industry into the meat industry. Devon based James Whetlor worked as a chef in London for ten years and at River Cottage in Devon. He founded Cabrito Goat Meat in 2012 and was soon supplying top restaurants and butchers around the country.

Cabrito Goat Meat won an Observer Food Monthly Award (2014) for Best Ethical Producer, Good Housekeeping’s Champion Meat Producer (2016), Young British Foodies Meat Award (2016) and was a finalist in the BBC Radio 4’s Food and Farming Awards 2017.

James is the International Director of Goatober, working closely with partners in New York and North America, Europe and Australia. In October 2016, James brought the month-long goat meat celebration, Goatober, to the UK. Originating in New York in 2012, James has been instrumental in turning Goatober into an international campaign bringing together dairies, farmers, NGOs and individuals who are passionate about ending food waste in the goat dairy system. In 2017, James hosted Goatober events in London, Bristol, Manchester, Somerset, Northern Ireland and Amsterdam. In 2019, there were Goatober events across the UK, USA, Trinidad, Spain, France and Australia.

GOAT: Cooking and Eating, James’ first cookbook, was published in April 2018 by Quadrille. It has been widely acclaimed as genre-defining and won the James Beard Foundation Award for best single subject book and the Guild of Food Writers award for best single subject.

About Billy Tannery
www.billytannery.co.uk

Billy Tannery is the first leather brand of its kind in Britain, with a vertically integrated supply chain from hide to final product. It was founded by childhood friends Jack Millington and Rory Harker, both from the Midlands. Jack and Rory’s goal is to put an end to the waste thousands of British goat hides by tapping into the rich leather heritage of the Midlands area.  In 2017, Billy Tannery launched a range of luxury goat leather bags and accessories that are designed and handmade in Britain using entirely British goat leather in their small batch tannery in the Midlands.

Billy Tannery partners with Cabrito to launch kid leather microtannery

Jack Millington and Rory Harker, founders of Billy Tannery, the first kid leather microtannery in the UK

Billy Tannery to launch the first ever British kid leather products using goat hides left over from the UK food industry

www.billytannery.co.uk

Billy Tannery is a new British leather brand founded by two entrepreneurs, Jack Millington and Rory Harker, both aged 28, from the Midlands, which makes products from kid goat leather that is tanned in a small-batch tannery or ‘microtannery’. The Billy Tannery website goes live today ahead of a product launch on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in May 2017.

Billy Tannery began when founders Jack and Rory discovered that, due to the growth in demand for goat meat in the UK and the decline of the British leather industry, there were thousands of hides going to waste. Now, having partnered with ethical goat meat supplier Cabrito, Billy Tannery use the leftover hides to produce premium vegetable tanned kid leather.

Billy Tannery is launching a range of luxury kid leather bags and accessories that are designed and handmade in Britain. It is the first leather brand of its kind in Britain, with a vertically integrated supply chain from hide to final product. Jack and Rory’s goal is to put an end to the waste of British goat hides by tapping into the rich leather heritage of the Midlands area. The first range of Billy Tannery products launches on the crowdfunding site, Kickstarter, in May 2017.

Billy Tannery founder Jack Millington said, “Despite the clear link between meat and leather, the topic is often uncomfortable and rarely discussed. In a time of increasing interest in provenance, our partnership with Cabrito allows us to trace our leather all the way back to the farm.”

More information can be found at www.billytannery.co.uk

- Billy Tannery was founded by childhood friends Jack Millington and Rory Harker, both 28 and from the Midlands. They have worked in the marketing and design industries in London since university, but have always dreamt of starting a business together

- The first range of Billy Tannery products will include notebooks, a card holder, a briefcase, a tote bag and a backpack. Product images coming in mid-April 2017

- Cabrito Goat Meat was founded by James Whetlor in 2012. Cabrito won an Observer Food Monthly Award (2014) for Best Ethical Producer, Good Housekeeping’s Champion Meat Producer (2016) and the Young British Foodies Meat Award (2016) and is a finalist in the Radio 4 Food Programme Food and Farming Awards 2017. (www.cabrito.co.uk)

The first range of Billy Tannery products will include notebooks, a card holder, a briefcase, a tote bag and a backpack