a little bit about oato
Oato has grown from humble beginnings in North-West Lancashire to now supplying doorsteps and stores all across the UK.
We are committed to both reducing our environmental impact and to supporting traditional industry; from farmers, to bottle printers, to your local milk round!
From our raw British oats through to the final fresh bottled oat milk, we are proud to make every step of the Oato journey happen in the UK.
Oato has grown from humble beginnings in North-West Lancashire to now supplying doorsteps and stores all across the UK.
We are committed to both reducing our environmental impact and to supporting traditional industry; from farmers, to bottle printers, to your local milk round!
From our raw British oats through to the final fresh bottled oat milk, we are proud to make every step of the Oato journey happen in the UK.
The Oato journey
Welcome to a short 'n' sweet timeline of what's been happening on Planet Oato since our founder Carl started blending oats up in his kitchen back in 2019.
October 2019: repurposing the bathtub
Our founder Carl realised that there were no fresh oat milks on the market, only UHT, which isn't as tasty. So using his background in Chemistry he started experimenting with creating a barista-grade oat milk.
Fridge space soon ran out so his creations got a nice ice bath.
May 2020: a brand is born
Although Oato didn't yet have any concrete branding, we got our bottle stamp (still used today) to be able to sell our oat drink on the milk rounds. Carl knocked up a rudimentary logo and website, and cleverly added the letter 'o' onto the end of the word 'oat', thus creating Oato!
November 2020: still got it!
Some disused beer stills were repurposed so Oato could finally be produced en masse. Milk&More took the plunge to become our first major distributor, and other milk rounds soon followed.
February 2021: shaping up a bit
Now we were on the national milk rounds, the brand needed a bit of TLC. We started producing our first branded bottles featuring the Oato logo we all know and love from today, as well as a new website.
July 2021: 1,000,000 pints sold!
Once the milk rounds started getting interested, a really wild 12 months took us from having sold only a few thousand bottles to the million mark at blistering pace.
Carl was chuffed to bits, obviously.
November 2022: Hey Presto(n)
Realising that our set-up at the time was not going to be able to keep pace with rapidly increasing demand, we moved to our current site in Preston, which is able to create much, much more Oato, as well as handling bottle washing and refills.
Oh and the best thing? It's all powered by solar energy.
March 2023: a flavourful occasion
Sometimes we all want a little treat, and why not?! You deserve it. So we set about expanding our oat milk range, with the first fresh chocolate oat milk in the UK soon followed by a juicy strawberry flavour.
May 2024: first national supermarket listing
We were absolutely thrilled to bits when we were able to announce our first national supermarket listing with Waitrose!
We are now stocked in over 200 stores across the country, in addition to dozens of Booths stores across the North-West.
21+
Million bottles of fresh Oato sold to date
96%
Of UK postcodes served by our milk round partners
322
Tonnes of waste saved from not using cartons
100%
Of our own power generated by solar energy
Milk round delivery
oato manifesto
To minimise environmental impact in producing and delivering a range of quality oat-based dairy substitutes.
oato manifesto
To source our ingredients from the UK wherever possible, supporting a plant-based future for British consumers, farmers and businesses.
About our bottles
Why glass bottles?
We use our original reusable glass bottles for their sustainability first and foremost: the bottles are bought back to our site where we clean and refill them, before handing them back over to the milk rounds, creating a loop whereby there is no package waste.
Why poly bottles?
In supermarkets, we have to package Oato differently. Glass isn't eco-friendly without reuse, and the alternative milk industry's cartons aren't widely recyclable in the UK. Our solution? Recycled plastic poly bottles, used in the dairy industry for decades, that can be reused up to 10 times.
