Sustainable Scotland: The Scottish family firms that are showing us the sustainable business way

The issue of climate change and the importance of sustainability are higher up the news agenda than ever before, with more consumers wanting to know the provenance and carbon footprint of what they consume.

This focus on sustainability has been apparent in Scotland’s food and drink sector for some time – for example, the Scotch whisky industry launched its environmental strategy, with ambitious voluntary targets, several years ago.

The Scottish Government is increasingly vocal about the country’s green aspirations and there is more pressure on business to take environmental challenges seriously.

In many ways, Scotland’s family businesses are ideally placed to take a sustainable view as they do not have to meet the generally more short-term demands of external shareholders.

Scotland boasts many family-owned food and drink brands that are recognised in the UK and further afield. These include the likes of Mackie’s of Scotland, Ian Macleod Distillers – owner of Edinburgh Gin and a number of Scotch whisky brands, including Glengoyne – Baxters, Borders Biscuits and Graham’s The Family Dairy.

Another to add to this growing list is Arbikie, a “field to bottle” distillery on the east coast of Scotland owned by brothers John, Iain and David Stirling. It has recently cemented its green credentials with the launch of what it calls “the world’s first climate positive gin”, which is made from peas.

Nàdar – meaning “nature” in Gaelic – gin is described by Arbikie as “harnessing the power of nature and science”. It has a carbon footprint of -1.54kg CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per 700ml bottle, and is the culmination of five years of research through Arbikie master distiller Kirsty Black’s PhD studentship, involving Abertay University and The James Hutton Institute.

Nàdar Gin avoids more carbon dioxide emissions than it creates as a result of peas being a key ingredient. Arbikie explains that most gins are made from spirit distilled from cereals – wheat, barley, maize. But growing peas needs no synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, and so its impact on waterways, air and soils is avoided. Peas also benefit the ecosystem, improving soil quality and offsetting synthetic nitrogen fertiliser requirements of following crops.

The launch of the new gin is in line with Arbikie’s ethos of creating premium spirits where all ingredients are grown on its single estate farm, drawing on four centuries of farming experience within the Stirling family. Iain Stirling says: “All firms can be sustainable, but family businesses tend to take a longer view. This has certainly been the case at Arbikie, which has already invested heavily in its aim to be one of the most sustainable distilleries in the world.”

Another Scottish producer of spirits that places sustainability at the heart of the family business is Ian Macleod Distillers. It owns the Glengoyne and Tamdhu distilleries and is currently rebuilding the iconic Rosebank distillery in Falkirk.

Ian Shackleton, Ian Macleod Distillers sales and brand board director, says a family ethos and an emphasis on trust and relationships continue to underpin the business, contributing to its focus on the environment.

The family business was started as a whisky broker in the 1930s and the founder’s grandson, Leonard Russell, has recently become managing director and chairman. Shackleton says the business is not driven by big company bureaucracy which means individuals such as distillery director Robbie Hughes have the freedom to make decisions which encourage sustainability.

Its senior brand manager, Katy Muggeridge, shares this passion for the environment and describes a number of sustainability initiatives, largely focusing on the Glengoyne distillery.

For example, since autumn last year the power of all Ian Macleod Distillers-owned sites has been supplied from a wind-backed source. To reduce and reuse waste, an anaerobic digester has been installed at Glengoyne. This allows the two bi-products of mashing and distillation – draff and pot ale – to be converted into electricity for local houses.

Glengoyne is also the official whisky partner of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. The distillery donates £5,000 a year to the charity and supports projects such as the trust’s campaign to save the endangered Greenland white-fronted goose – the birds that give Glengoyne its name as “Glen of the Wild Geese”.

It was also the first distillery in Scotland to adopt a wetlands facility to filter 100 per cent of its waste liquid. Reed beds filter and cleanse the effluent from the spirit stills and dispose of it in an environmentally friendly manner, rather than sending it to an industrial treatment plan. The firm has also been working on the repackaging of Glengoyne’s range of Highland single malt Scotch whiskies over the last two years to ensure all of its packaging is recyclable or reusable and uses the maximum amount of recycled content possible. This new packaging is set to launch in April.

Muggeridge says: “From a Glengoyne perspective we are quite far along the sustainability journey and we’re trying to replicate this across the rest of the business.”

Turning to Scotland’s family-owned food businesses, many well-established firms are demonstrating a commitment to sustainability. Echoing the sentiments of other family companies, Mackie’s of Scotland – well known for its ice cream – says it has the freedom and flexibility to follow its heart and make longer-term decisions, including investment in renewable energy.

Karin Mackie is marketing director and one of three sibling owners, alongside her sister Kirstin, development director, and brother, Mac, managing director. Karin explains: “We are climate positive while still being a business which has to be profitable. From experience we are confident that investment in renewable energy is also cost effective, and the environment is an important issue for an ever-increasing numbers of our consumers.”

She says the family has always had a pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit. The ice cream brand was started by her father Maitland in the 1980s as a response to changing tastes which left the milk retail business on its dairy farm with vast amounts of excess cream.

And she says the company vision includes the desire to become the greenest company in Britain: “Dad had a wind turbine as early as 1982 and later became a self-appointed ‘missionary’ for wind power. Mac has a similar passion for renewable energy and in 2005 they installed our first on-site wind turbine.”

The firm now has four turbines plus solar panels on the roof of the chocolate factory and the cow byre, and biomass boilers which heat the office and farm cottages. In 2015 it added what was then Scotland’s largest solar farm, with 7,000 panels. In total over the year, more than 80 per cent of its power is supplied by its own renewable energy, with surplus energy generated sold to the national grid.

Mackie’s is also investing in a £4.5m project that will see its existing freezing equipment replaced with new low carbon, power-efficient units which run on ammonia – a natural refrigerant gas that poses no threat to the environment.

Another family food business showing a greater awareness and dedication to the environment is Borders Biscuits, based in Lanark in the Central Belt. Last year, the company managed to eliminate 90 per cent of plastic from its packaging, removing 537 tonnes of CO2e from its manufacturing process annually. The reduction in plastic packaging has had a knock-on effect on transportation. Less packaging has meant it can fit double the amount of packs onto a single pallet, making the transport of its biscuits more environmentally friendly.

In 2018, it reduced its annual factory food waste level by more than 50 per cent, which equates to over 90 tonnes per year. And in terms of giving back to the community, the firms donates 10 per cent of its annual profits to local causes.

John Cunningham, managing director at Border Biscuits, says: “Being a family business allows us to set our own compass. While there is a need to be profitable, as a business our focus isn’t only on the bottom line. This allows us to implement processes that others who have to meet the demands of shareholders will find very challenging.”

Graham’s The Family Dairy based in Bridge of Allan is Scotland’s largest independent dairy, producing a range of products from milk and butter to cheese and ice cream, and was started back in 1939 with just 12 cows.

Robert Graham, managing director, says: “Building a happy, sustainable environment for our next generation is incredibly important to our family. Actively working to make positive ecological changes across every area of our business, we particularly encourage everyone to reduce, reuse, recycle.”

Initiatives it has implemented include making all its milk bottles 100 per cent recyclable; introducing glass milk bottle doorstep delivery across Scotland; reducing the plastic in its milk caps in weight by 13 per cent and trialling a machine pallet wrap with the aim to reduce plastic usage by 50 per cent annually.

Graham adds: “Family values, long-term thinking and being innovative is important to our business. Our family, and the 110 farmers we work with in communities across Scotland, all have an obsession about high standards and well-being. It’s at the heart of everything we do.”

This article first featured in The Scotsman’s spring 2020 edition of Vision. A digital version can be found here.