Top award for Guido Morelli as he celebrates his 80th birthday

Guido and his family scooped their ninth win in ten years at the prestigious National Ice Cream Competition organised by The Ice Cream Alliance - the trade body for the UK’s £1bn ice cream industry.

The family’s famous double cream dairy vanilla once again took top honours in the ‘Open Ice Cream’ class. They also ‘scooped’ two second place awards in other categories.

Daniela Morelli said: ”All the credit goes to my father Guido who developed the recipe, which has led to so much success.

“It is a wonderful 80th birthday present for him.

“The recognition these awards bring has been a great advantage in growing our business. In addition to supplying major supermarkets such as Tesco and

Sainsburys we now have ice cream parlours in Cookstown and Ballycastle and a new all Ireland distributor, Brakes Foodservice.”

Daniela’s great uncle Pietro Morelli, who founded the business, added: “Our success is based on using the finest Irish dairy produce and ingredients which are all carefully sourced with our double cream being produced right on our doorstep!”

It’s a formula that is clearly working for the well-known local family, with more than 50 different flavours of ice cream being produced at their Coleraine factory.

Every year the factory, that employs seven people, produces a staggering 300,000 litres of ice cream!