Stewarts of Tayside Ltd is a family business that launched in 1975 with Jim and Mary Stewart at the helm. Stewarts is a swede growing, packing and distribution company dedicated to supplying its customers with an all-year round service. It also has a sizeable soft fruit operation and has recently added a haulage wing to ensure a professional service to all its customers.
“In the early days we started with a lot of cattle and sheep, but after a few years we weren't making enough to buy the farm outright so we moved into raspberries and strawberries,” says managing director Jim Stewart of the 1,000 acre farm's inception. “Then we concentrated on soft fruit and cash crops like swedes, sprouts, calabrese, potatoes and I succeeded in buying the farm.
“With the way farming was, you needed a good cash flow in order to pay off the overdraft and that forced us to be more efficient. If you do too many things it's difficult to specialise, so we chose swedes, soft fruit, sprouts and potatoes. But sprouts weren't financially viable and dropping that was a good move. Two years later we dropped potatoes and built the swede operation up. And we've progressed from there.”
In the early 1990s, the focus at Stewarts moved solely to swedes and soft fruit. Swede is a natural crop for the east of Scotland, because it thrives in the growing environment there. “We'd been growing swede since the very beginning so we felt it was a good thing to specialise in,” adds Stewart, who is one of the largest swede growers in the UK and the main swede supplier to Asda.
This year, Stewarts is growing 1,300 acres of swede that are sown within a 40 mile radius of Perth. Although the land is rented from around 40 farmers, Stewarts completes the whole operation itself ñ from preparing the land to harvesting the crop. This ensures the farm has 100 per cent control of chemicals and fertiliser input, and can schedule harvesting to the specific requirements of the washing plant. Stewarts also has swede growers in Portugal and Canada providing enough product to allow it to supply customers all year round.
The soft fruit side of the business consists of 120 acres of polythene tunnel covered strawberries and 40 acres of raspberries, 10 acres of which are also covered by polythene tunnels.
“The east of Scotland is famed for raspberries and it's a good area for strawberries too,” says Stewart. “At that time we had a bigger area of raspberries than strawberries and it all went to the processing market. It was a big industry at that time, with quite a few companies canning soft fruit in Scotland. But people don't want to buy processed food in huge volumes now, they want fresh product. So we switched sides to the fresh market in the early 1990s and that proved to be much more profitable.”
Up on the east of Scotland, the land is well-suited to raspberry growing because, explains Stewart, there are not the same disease pressures which growers in the south face. “It's a colder climate and that helps the growing of the crop. That applies to swedes too,” he adds. “We don't have the same root fly population you have in the south. Swedes like a cooler climate and so do raspberries, so the east of Scotland is well suited. We also have an ideal amount of rainfall here.”
Swede consumption has always been higher in the poorer areas of northern Europe, continues Stewart, “so the further north you come in the UK the greater the consumption of swede is. The more affluent areas tend to go for the more expensive foods. I don't think that's necessarily still the case, but because northern consumers have been eating swede there is a definite difference. For example, sales in London are not as high as those in the north east”.
He adds that swede growing is a dedicated industry with fewer and fewer dedicated growers involved because it is now an expensive crop to grow. Stewart describes it as a niche but balanced market.
As a result of the government taking a large number of chemicals out of use, swede growers have turned to heavy-duty enviromesh covers to protect their crops against pest damage. “We're looking at covering the crop from sowing in May to harvesting in September,” says Stewart, who has been using the mesh for three years. “The mesh is very expensive but it is something we've got to do to keep the pests out and our chemical use down.”
When the company became involved with swedes in a big way, business really took off. “We used to export swedes to Norway, Germany and the wholesale markets. And we used to supply the supermarkets through pre-packers,” Stewart eludes. “But with increased competition between the supermarkets, they wanted direct sourcing so we ensured we were able to pack direct and now we are the main suppliers of swede to Asda ñ our biggest customer.”
Stewarts has been involved directly with the supermarket chain for six years, although the working connection extends back way beyond that period. With Asda having a policy of sourcing product from the UK whenever possible, Stewarts' updated cold storage facilities is helping to extend the swede growing season by around one month.
With the help of a processing grant from the Scottish Executive of Environmental and Rural Affairs Department, more than £1 million was invested in a swede packhouse facility incorporating a new packing line, loading departure bay facilities and additional yarding for trucks. Additional cold stores have also been built which increase the company's cold store capacity. This is expected to improve and elongate the summer production of cold store swedes. The new facilities are almost at completion and it is hoped this will open in the summer.
On the soft fruit side, Stewarts has grown crops under tunnels for five years. “We couldn't get any continuity in quality and supply,” explains Stewart of his decision to protect the crop, “because you can have a perfectly good field of strawberries destroyed by one drastic night of rainfall. It's such an expensive crop to grow but there's no guarantee of your crop. As a business it didn't seem to make sense.
“So when the tunnels came out we tried them and it gave us an increased yield and a guaranteed picking environment. That gave us continuity for the supermarkets and took some of the risk out of growing. The downside is it requires a high level of investment, but that's the nature of the business. You have to be prepared to spend money to make money. And you also need a good market. The market is there for the soft fruit but if you can't sell the fruit at the right time you can lose money and that's another pit you can fall into.”
Stewarts of Tayside employs around 100 full time staff to run its operation and, from March to November, an additional 200 students from Eastern Europe are recruited through an agency to live on-site and help with the harvesting. With dedicated staff to look after this workforce, the students are well catered for.
In a new venture, Stewarts set up its own haulage wing last year to cope with the growing quantity of swedes. “On the swede job there was such a massive amount of haulage to organise that it made sense to start our own business,” says Stewart, who has 10 lorries at the moment. “So far it's proved very successful and has been an enormous asset to the business.”
With a finger in such a range of pies, there is no fear of the Scottish company running to ground. Heading a professional and organised business, Stewart concludes: “The future is basically to consolidate and try to achieve our aims. There's a lot of changes happening with the swedes and with us trying to get a longer season for them, so we're just trying to make a good job of what we're doing.”
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