New oil boom could net Highlands a fortune

ON A sunlit hillside on the Craig Dhu estate in the Highlands, history is being made. A bizarre-looking machine, a cross between a helicopter, hovercraft and giant vacuum cleaner, is negotiating uneven woodland and sucking up leaves.

Under the brilliant blue skies, it negotiates the scrub and a large soft hopper on the back begins to fill up with sprigs of bog myrtle. This is the first-ever mechanised harvest of the plant - and the birth of a new rural industry which could soon be worth 1.5m a year to Scotland.

The bunches of leaves will be distilled to extract the essential oil, which research has found to contain a wealth of antioxidants and to have anti-bacterial and insect repellent properties.

Highland Natural Products, which has worked on developing the plant for a variety of uses, believes it could be Scotland’s answer to tea tree oil - the herbal antiseptic which has become Australia’s second biggest horticultural industry.

Amid fears that the name bog myrtle may put off consumers, the company proposes to market the product under its old English folk name - sweet gale - and products containing Scottish sweet gale could be on the shelves within a year.

A consignment of bog myrtle - a key ingredient in beer before the introduction of hops - was sold to the massive Kirin brewery in Tokyo for use in a speciality bottled beer.

Two-and-a-half years ago, trials began with a major pharmaceutical company, which carried out tests and discovered the essential oil in bog myrtle could not only repel insects, but was also anti-bacterial and brimming with antioxidants.

The pharmaceutical company, which is keeping its identity under wraps, now proposes to develop an anti-headlice shampoo and an antibacterial facewash using bog myrtle as a main ingredient.

With the harvester successfully tested, the next stage is to cultivate bog myrtle on suitable patches of ground, creating a new sustainable crop which can be grown on rough, rocky and wooded ground.

Consultant agriculturalist Richard Constanduros, the founder of Highland Natural Products, believes bog myrtle is just one of many Scottish plants and herbs which have potential commercial uses.

Mr Constanduros founded the company in 2000 after being involved in a survey commissioned by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which identified no less than 17 native plants which had potential to be used as ingredients in food, cosmetics or pharmaceuticals.

The agriculturalist, who sourced the herbs for Purdey’s health drink and helped develop Shetland-based Blackwood’s Nordic Vodka, believes celtic folklore is a useful guide to the properties of plants.

According to folklore, bog myrtle was an effective insect repellent, with Highland housewives folding sprigs in the laundry cupboard to repel moths and hanging branches from kitchen rafters to keep away flies. Mr Constanduros said: "It goes back to the celtic healers. The plants used by them are important indicators of what plants have potential, so we depend a lot on folklore; it’s a very important source."

In the case of bog myrtle, the research was pioneered by Angus Stuart, a retired biochemist from Skye, who developed an effective midge repellent based on oil extracted from the leaves. Although the prototype foundered under commercial pressure, his work gave the company the confidence to go on. "He was our guru," Mr Constanduros said.

With 750,000 of commercial and government funding, serious research on the commercial application of bog myrtle began. Mr Constanduros’s stepson, Douglas Hardy, became operations director and trawled the Highlands for suitable swatches of wild bog myrtle.

For landowners, crofters and small farmers, a new market for bog myrtle is a potential source of income and could provide a secondary use for uneven, boggy land. Mr Hardy said: "We anticipate a demand for 1.5 million of raw material from the Highlands. We are looking at areas where there is already a bit of bog myrtle. We are working in clusters, rather than having sites spread out everywhere."

Landowners like Angus Macpherson at Craig Dhu could earn a maximum 750 per hectare, growing a crop which barely disturbs the landscape.

"What is happening here is very exciting," he said. "They just pick the tops of the bushes, which means patches of grass are exposed, which will attract the deer. We really struggle to employ people up here. If I can get revenue and can plough that into the local economy, that’s huge. I’m more excited now that I have seen it than when Douglas first came along and said: ‘I have a dream. You’ve got this wonderful patch of bog myrtle and we can use it’."

Mary Scanlon, a Tory MSP for the Highlands, said: "The smell is quite unique. This has grown wild for centuries and now we have found a use for it. I think the demand for the plant and the research into the uses of bog myrtle means we are just at the beginning of a very exciting new venture for the Highlands."