Mackie’s Gets Green Light for Renewable Ice-Cream

By FRANK URQUHART

FORGET your traditional vanilla – one of Scotland’s leading food companies is set to produce Britain’s first truly “green” ice-cream from renewable energy sources.

Over the past 21 years Mackie’s of Scotland, a former family dairy farming business, has been transformed into a major force in the luxury ice-cream market.

The company, which produces almost eight million litres of its luxury range from its headquarters in the heart of rural Aberdeenshire, has already captured 35 per cent of the Scottish market and a growing share of the English market for luxury ice- cream, as well as exporting to South Korea and Norway.

Two years ago Mackie’s installed a 45-metre high wind turbine, costing GBP 750,000, at the family farm at Westertown near Rothienorman, to supply more than half the energy needs of its ice- cream production facility.

And yesterday Maitland “Mac” Mackie, the managing director, took delivery of two further wind turbines in a GBP 1.7 million investment which will guarantee that the business is completely carbon neutral and that Mackie’s award-winning ice-cream will now be made with 100 per cent renewable energy.

The two new turbines, both 49m high, will more than treble the electricity being generated at the Westertown complex, saving the company GBP 280,000 a year in electricity bills.

And surplus electricity from the turbines, which are capable of generating 2.5 kilowatts, will be sold on to the National Grid with the potential to power 1,000 homes.

Mr Mackie said: “Our aim is to become the greenest company in Britain by 2009. This makes good sense for our business because our consumers have told us that it is important for them to know that their favourite ice-cream is made with 100 per cent renewable energy. It also makes good financial sense – we are a rural business which needs significant power levels and will continue to need more as we grow.”

He added: “I am partly a man on a mission because I believe in doing what we can for the environment but it also makes business sense to go down this road – it is a cheaper way to produce electricity and it is good for us to say that our ice-cream is made with renewable energy.”

The company, which won the first environmental award in the Scottish Food and Drink Excellence Awards earlier this year, is also looking at plans to invest GBP 1 million in a biofuel plant and at developing solar power in the future.

Juliet Davenport, the chief executive of the renewable energy company, Good Energy, praised Mackie’s initiative. She said: “Organisations like Mackie’s are leading the way to show how we can become a society that cares about how our products are made.”

The Mackie family have been farming at Westertown since the turn of the century, but it was only in 1986 that they began their ice- cream business. In 1993 the traditional byre and old mill were converted to a modern ice-cream dairy capable of producing more than 10 million litres a year. In 2006 production machinery was added to raise capacity in the ice-cream dairy to 6,000 litres per hour.

(c) 2007 Scotsman, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.