IN THE MIDST of uncertainty and change, Robert Graham of Graham’s the Family Dairy says it’s never been more important for Scotland to play to its strengths and think big.
Within the UK and the EU, seismic shifts are taking place. With still so much uncertainty, it is easy to understand why that is an unsettling prospect.
We have a brief but important window to create opportunity out of this situation. Opportunity that would see Scotland benefit in transformational ways: through increased job drivers, stronger international trading relationships and economic resilience.
How positively Scotland is viewed on the international stage became apparent to me earlier this year at Gulfoods, one of the world’s largest food and hospitality events. Here, Graham’s the Family Dairy won the ‘Dairy Innovation Award’ for Protein 22. It is this type of approach towards research and development that is helping us break into new export markets and secure more UK listings.
But how can we stop the economic uncertainty of Brexit? Scotland’s larder may hold the answer. As a country, our food and drink exports reached a record high of £5.5bn in 2016 yet are we making the most of our potential at home?
Dairy is perfectly positioned to support job creation and wellbeing programmes at a global scale. In doing so, the sector can grow Scotland’s GDP, forge career pathways and back education programmes.
Yet Great Britain is the world’s third largest net importer of dairy by value. 90% of all spreadable butter sold in Scotland is not produced here; the figure is the same for yoghurt. Brexit could see the World Trade Organisation’s tariff import levy of 36% applied to dairy products. The challenge and opportunity is how we mitigate the risk of such tariffs through measures which grow our economy.
We need to think big by growing Scotland’s domestic production capacity now. We can develop and sell more home-grown products, support businesses and job creation.
As a third-generation family business, we have grown by continually investing in three things: people, brands and modern production facilities. I believe these values apply equally to the Scottish economy.
However, re-balancing our industrial strategy needs to come swiftly. Increasing Scotland’s domestic processing capacity will be the pipeline for new products, boosting innovation, delivering inclusive skills development and improving Scotland’s export. All are central to building a resilient post-Brexit economy.
Our company is poised to help drive this forward with a proposed national dairy production, research and education facility in Stirling. Should our housing development with Mactaggart & Mickel Homes be approved, we will not only deliver much needed housing and facilities for the local area, we will also facilitate a step change investment strategy, increasing productivity, supporting skills development and accelerating new product innovation.
Scotland’s food and drink industry – admired the world over – has the ambition and energy to drive investment in skills development, research and modern production facilities, to enable a positive outcome to the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead.
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel