'˜Scottish Butcher' Simon Howie seeks bigger slice of market

Simon Howie has built up a sizeable portfolio covering sectors including shower panels and shipping. Picture: Contributed

But Simon Howie, known as The Scottish Butcher, has built a business empire on selling sausages – as well as bacon, burgers, black puddings and more besides.

The firm is an established presence on supermarket shelves, has secured the likes of Gleneagles as a customer and in its most recently published annual results saw turnover reach £14.7 million and pre-tax profit £2.5m.

The Perthshire company has just revealed a rebranding, with a pack redesign across its core product range that Howie describes as a “freshen-up” of the brand to help it stand out among rivals on the shelves.

It lets people “get a feel for who we are and what we are and the core values of the products”, he continues, citing an increasing consumer focus on provenance, as well as on products that are gluten-free and low in fat and salt.

“As you’re bringing in these new products with these different attributes, it gives you a reason to revamp the packaging and have a look at how everything fits together.”

It comes as the company looks to increase supermarket sales by 100 per cent in the next four or five years. Sales are split 70:30 between Scotland and the rest of the UK, Howie adds, with the ambition to reverse this ratio.

“We don’t believe it’s going to be simple to double our turnover in Scotland alone, so we’ve got to look at the rest of the UK as being our big opportunity.”

And rebrand is part of such a target. “We don’t want to look like a parochial Scottish brand, we want to look like a brand that’s truly national and has value that would suit somebody in the south of England in the same way as it would suit somebody in Inverness.”

He also believes consumers “buy with their eyes” so the product needs to look good. “If it’s like-for-like with someone else sitting next to it that doesn’t look so good then hopefully they’ll choose ours. That’s the holy grail.”

Scottish produce more broadly, such as salmon, is making great gains in overseas sales, with an 11 per cent year-on-year jump in exports of food and drink in the first quarter of this year to £1.2 billion.

But Howie does not see selling abroad as a major priority – at least not yet. “It’s something we’ve definitely got our eye on. But we’ve got a very good opportunity to do more in England so that’s where our main focus should be.”

Additionally, while haggis is a “massive” product for the firm, ranking the UK’s number one brand by volume, he is inevitably keen to see the lifting of the US import ban, introduced in 1971.

200 Voices: find out more about the people who have shaped Scotland

Returning to its core market to date in Scotland, whose economy has been lagging behind the rest of the UK, Howie insists that austerity has benefited his sales. Most of its supermarket products are classified as manufactured meat products, he says. “People are trading heavily into these products, so they’re moving away from prime cuts.”

Howie has also amassed a sizeable business portfolio comprising more than 400 people and covering everything from shower panels to shipping services.

Recent additions include estate agent Pacitti Jones, owned via Dupplin Investments, his joint venture with business partner Kevin Taylor.

A career highlight came in the form of Shore Recycling that he founded in 2002. It was bought by South West Water owner Pennon in 2008 for £23m, and thought to have resulted in a £17m windfall for Howie.

He is looking to extend his number of businesses, targeting infrastructure. “We’ve got a couple of things bubbling away, which will be quite nice if they come off.”

Howie has been a vocal critic of business rates, particularly charges for empty properties at 90 per cent after six months, which he damns as a “counter-intuitive” policy hampering business growth and stopping developers creating speculative new-builds.

“I have a 16-acre site at Perth – if it hadn’t been for void rates I’d be building buildings on it right now waiting for a tenant to come along in these various properties, but now you’ve got to tiptoe around the whole process. Instead of looking at [commercial property] as a money tree, they should be looking at it as fertile soil that things can grow in, and I think that that’s a mistake that the government have made.”

30-SECOND CV

Born: 1967, Perthshire

Education: Perth Academy and Millhouse Farm, Dunning, Perthshire

First job: Apprentice butcher

Ambition while at school: To be making my own decisions

What car do you drive? Ford Ranger

Favourite mode of transport: Fendt 724 Tractor

Music: Scottish dance music, easy listening

Kindle or book? Book

Reading material: Second World War military history or interesting people

Can’t live without: Constant contact with my family

What makes you angry? Meanness and bullying, poor decision-making at government level

What inspires you? People getting things done, at any level

Favourite place: Dunning

Best thing about your job? The versatility and unpredictability

Best business advice you’ve ever been given? Buy well, sell well and pay your bills on time

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