He was hailed as the hero who saved the Scotch tomato industry from extinction when he took over the last remaining glasshouses in the Clyde Valley and breathed new life into the ailing business.

 

Armed with £150,000 funding and smart new logo, he launched his new brand onto the market just as the "buy local" movement was becoming hip.

But young entrepreneur David Craig conceded defeat and confirmed that Clyde Valley Tomatoes, Scotland's largest commercial tomato grower, has ceased trading after just two years.

It means Mr Craig, 34, and partner Scott Robertson, who ran it with him, will not take up the option of buying the glasshouses from owner Jim Craig, who is no relation, but whose grandfather started the business, J&M Craig, in 1953.

The state-of-the-art glasshouses on the 32-acre site at Briarneuk Nurseries, near Carluke, will revert back to Mr Craig senior, who leased the land and the buildings to Craig on an initial three-year contract when he retired in 2012.

At the time, Mr Craig senior said the industry which made the Clyde Valley famous was doomed because imported cheap tomatoes from Holland, Poland and Romania were being favoured by supermarkets and had priced Scotch tomatoes out of the market.

The Scotland's Tomatoes co-operative of farmers from Clyde Valley was formed to try to persuade supermarkets to give Scotch tomatoes more prominence on shelves, but the initiative failed and J&M decided to sell their produce at farmers' markets only.

This was not the view taken by Mr Craig, a former marketing executive with WholeFoods Market, who believed consumer tastes had changed and that there was a strong demand for local, seasonal fresh produce.

This was borne out by the support shown to Clyde Valley Tomatoes by supermarkets Waitrose, Morrisons and WholeFoods Market in all their branches across Scotland, by Dobbie's Garden Centres and by customers at Edinburgh and Glasgow farmers' markets. Each retailer sold its own exclusive selection of the 14 varieties grown by Mr Craig.

Last year they launched Clyde Valley Kitchen, a range of soups and condiments using their own tomatoes and fresh produce from nearby farms.

Athough funding and support from Clydesdale Bank, South Lanarkshire Council and Scotherbs was not withdrawn, Mr Craig said the issue was he could not justify the investment with sufficient profit moving forward.

"The demand was definitely there," he told The Herald yesterday. "But we didn't make much money out of it and we couldn't make it profitable. The numbers just wouldn't stack up. We were being squeezed on all sides, from the cost of oil to heat the glasshouses, to staffing issues. We knew we just had to make the call. Our big bold experiment just didn't work.

"The problem was we were too big to be niche, but too small to be a really big industry player."

"We are broken-hearted. We put our heart and souls into this and couldn't have worked any harder to build up the brand. If we could have found a way to keep going for another year I feel sure it could have worked, but we just didn't have the money."