Earlier this week Douglas was in Westertown visiting Mackie's of Scotland's dairy farm and manufacturing site. Their 1,600 acre farm where they produce their products employs over one hundred people from the surrounding area.
Whilst there Douglas learned about how the business is making progress to becoming a entirely self sufficient business. They've been working towards this goal for many years now by generating their own wind power since 2005. Their four turbines generating enough energy a year to power over 2,000 homes. Along with their turbines the business also has a number of solar panels generating a further 2,000 MWh per year. To complement these Mackie's are currently making a massive investment into biomass energy.
They already do so much to be as self sufficient as possible with most of what they produce being done so at their Westertown site. Be it the milk from their almost 300 cows, the manufacturing of their ice cream from that milk, producing their own chocolate. They've also made huge investments into producing their own packaging to reduce their environmental impact and are always looking for new ways to improve.
It's absolutely great to see how this North East success story is working hard to become a self sufficient business to do their bit for the environment all while employing local workers and expanding their business. They even make ice cubes!
Douglas Lumsden MSP
During the visit Douglas was able to hear about the business' vision for the future and how they're employing the technologies of tomorrow to expand into new markets across the UK and beyond to places like the US and even as far as Taiwan.
