Branston Invests GBP1.7m at Scotland Site
One of the UKs largest potato suppliers, Branston, unveiled the latest fully integrated grading, washing and sizing line at its Perthshire site, thereby revolutionizing the factory’s ability to process high volumes of this particular crop.
The GBP1.7m investment is the result of the need for increasing production in order to meet the demand of a significant long-term supply contract that the company was recently awarded.
Kevin Imrie, general manager at Branston’s Scotland site, stated: “The new equipment – supplied by Haith Group and Newtec – will go a long way increasing efficiency and output at our Scottish site. The line has state-of-the-art washing equipment, as well as the latest in optical-grading technology. It reduces the manual handling of crop and enables potatoes to be graded to remove quality defects, then sorted into much more accurate size bands ready for packing.”
Branston, which has three sites across the UK – located in Perthshire, Lincolnshire and Somerset – has supplied potatoes to the country’s major supermarkets for almost 50 years and is continually modernizing and adapting to the evolving food industry.
Imrie explained that the new technology creates a simpler and more efficient process, whereby the plant is able to wash, size grade and remove quality defects in one process, enabling the handling of up to 175,000 potatoes/50 tons per hour.
“Machinery is extremely important to our day-to-day running and new technology makes our work a lot more streamlined and efficient for our staff and customers, but we couldn’t survive without the support of our growers.
The site works with 41 growers in Scotland and we are looking to add to this total as the business continues to expand and grow in a bid to keep up with the demand for one the country’s most popular crops.
“We have excellent relationships with our growers and we have chosen our sites based on the UK’s best potato-producing areas. The continued investment in new technology shows our continued commitment to growing our business in Scotland for the long-term benefit of the potato industry here and across the UK,” Imrie said.
