Smooth operator: how Irish butter melted hearts

It’s 50 years since Kerrygold was first exported — the ultimate success story of an industry once driven by the Cork Butter Market, says Robert Hume

FIFTY years ago, Kerrygold butter went ‘global’. In Oct 1962, it was launched in the UK, in Manchester; three years later it was available in London.

Irish butter had been exported to England for three centuries, and is described as salty by Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861).