Following on from our blog announcing this year’s Collaboration Prize winners, we’ll be taking a closer look at each of our winning collaborations over the coming weeks and learning more about their plans for the future. First up is Made in Scotland…
Made In Scotland – Collaborative Export Solutions
Made in Scotland – Collaborative Export Solutions is a collaboration of eleven companies involved in the luxury food and drink sector from across the Highlands and Islands. By demonstrating particularly strong international ambitions to be delivered via the collaboration, it was awarded a special accolade at the HSBC Scottish Export Awards.
Made in Scotland offers a range of products including salmon, cheese, cakes and charcuterie as well as craft gin, craft beer and whisky. The collaboration will enable member businesses to offer the basket of Scottish produce to lucrative overseas markets by pooling together their resources and experience, both intellectually and financially.
We caught up with Willie Cameron from Made in Scotland who said: “The idea was to create a route to market for high quality SME producers and to give them the resources like the big boys have that they could not afford as individual business operators.
“The great opportunity is that Scotland as a country is high on the world agenda and that is what we are cashing in on, i.e. both general interest and expats.
“One thing that has been extremely successful in particular is the cross-selling between some of the businesses within the collaboration. In one instance a partnership has even been created through the purchase of a defunct brewery by two members. Another venture is the introduction of one of the member’s ice cream products to seventeen outlets of another member. None of this would have happened if it was not for the collaboration. It also helps to strengthen the bond between the companies. Collaboration on sales and marketing has also lead to operational collaboration between member companies resulting in cost saving, new product development and in one case an acquisition.
“The Made in Scotland operational and funding model is ground-breaking, not only in Scotland but internationally. It will drive international opportunities for Scottish-based SME food companies and thus help underpin the Scottish Government’s aspirations to double exports to £17.1bn by 2107.
“It was fantastic news to hear we had won the Collaboration Prize. The money and support will enable us to access expert advice on marketing food and drink on a global scale, as well as allowing us to develop our brand and create a website with e-commerce functionality. This will help us to really get our name and offering out there on a magnitude that would be far more difficult for us to achieve as individual companies.
“Not only does working together enable us to reach an international customer base as a whole, it also encourages us to support each other by highlighting new opportunities that we think will benefit individual members. By continuing to collaborate, we aim to further boost Scotland’s global reputation as a producer of some of the finest food and drink in the world, hopefully attracting more of the country’s like-minded, quality producers to join us along the way.”
The member businesses in Made in Scotland are:
- Cobbs, Inverness
- Cairngorm Brewery, Aviemore, Highlands
- Shetland Distillery, Shetland
- R & B Distillers (opening distillery in Isle of Raasay, Highlands, and plans to open one in the Borders)
- Scottish Salmon Company (offices in Cairndow in Argyll and Bute, Isle of Lewis in Stornoway and Edinburgh)
- Bute Island Foods Ltd, Argyll and Bute
- Summer Harvest Oils, Crieff, Perth and Kinross
- Taste of Arran, North Ayrshire
- Braehead Foods, Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire
- Aldomak, Giffnock, East Renfrewshire
- Bondeau, Glasgow