One of Scotland's largest Christmas tree farms is up for sale, with just over 100 days left before December 25.
Savills is selling The Maviston Christmas Tree Farm in Nairn, Morayshire, on a 250 acre site on the shores of the Moray Firth.
The farm is available at offers over £3,200,000 and includes almost 700,000 trees.
The sellers bought the 250,000 acre farm in 2010, and are now planning to consolidate their business into the south and central belt of Scotland where they now have three other farms growing Christmas trees.
Alastair Gemmell, of Savills, said: "While Maviston is a specialised property it provides a great investment opportunity with an immediate income stream.
“The 675,000 trees which are currently growing here have the potential to provide excellent returns in the years ahead, and there is scope for further planting. However, a new owner may decide to return the 250 acres to agricultural land, or to put in place alternative development plans.
“The demand for Nordmann fir trees continues to rise as they become more popular, and Maviston is well placed to benefit from this expanding market.”
He added: "It generally takes about six or seven years from planting for the trees to be harvested and all of the hard work in getting good quality trees to the harvesting stage has been done. The Nordmann fir trees at Maviston are very good quality and we anticipate that approximately 100,000 trees will be cut and sold to wholesalers in the final quarter of this year alone.
"The climate at the farm is surprisingly mild and dry because it is near the Moray Firth so it provides ideal conditions for growing Christmas trees, and particularly the very popular Nordmann fir variety.
"There isn't a house on the farm but given the size of the holding, any buyer would have a strong argument with the planning authority to have one built, from which to manage the business.
"We expect this to attract a lot of interest. It may appeal to somebody who is already in the Christmas tree growing industry who already has the connections and the contacts or somebody wishing to enter the industry for the first time, in which case our client who is very well established in the Christmas tree market would be very willing to provide ongoing management or consultancy advice."
The Christmas tree growing market in the UK is worth more than £200 million a year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here