Food and Drink Sector
From traditional agricultural to scientific advances in food security, Perth & Kinross is renowned globally for its food and drink industry and is home to a plethora of Scotch Whisky distilleries, the world-famous Tay Salmon fishing, and the JHI International Barley Hub.
The area plays a pivotal role in food innovation and developments across agriculture, plant and crop science, and thanks to its strategic location, is a logistics and distribution hub for national and international brands such as Highland Spring, Praveen Kumar Premium Meals, and more.
Today, there are currently around 900 food and drink businesses, thriving and growing in Perth and the wider region. Driven by the Business Growth Team, this flourishing industry benefits significantly from continued investment and these businesses jointly generate almost £500 million per annum (2021 statistics).
The commitment to connecting food producers, innovators and their supporting industry with the rest of Scotland, the UK and international export customers is ongoing with a £10m industry-specific investment in agri-tech and food innovation via Tay Cities Deal.
Northfield Business Park
The purpose-built, £7.6m Perth Food and Drink Park development was launched in 2018 and since then, has grown to incorporate Northfield Business Park, offering an extremely competitive opportunity to food and drink businesses from the wider UK and global marketplace.
- Purpose-built food and drink units
- Serviced plots
- An existing hub of established food & drink businesses and industry peers
Having fully exploited the favourable land and commercial rates available in Perth, the development offers unrivalled value. Bringing together cost-effective production facilities, with a highly desirable, strategic location on the edge of the city, the Park delivers superlative infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of its larger Scottish counterparts including food and drink opportunities in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow.
Favourable consideration will be given to notes of interest from both existing and start-up businesses in manufacturing, distilling, supply chain efficiencies, food innovation and logistics. In particular, the team are ready to push forward ideas that will support high-value, long-term and skilled employment for the area’s growing population.
Wasted Degrees
Since it launched in 2017, Wasted Degrees has scaled several times. Most significantly, moving from Conall’s parents’ garage in 2019 to a fully operational site in Blair Atholl. It is now on target to produce around 225,000 litres of beer by 2026 giving a 66% compound annual growth rate over five years.
In March 2022, Conall and Jack successfully secured funding via the Council’s Green Recovery Capital Development Grant to enable the purchase of a canning line and labelling machine allowing them to begin exporting. They are currently in the process of building a new, purpose-built brewery.
James Hutton Institute
Scotland’s pre-eminent interdisciplinary scientific research organisation, The James Hutton Institute undertakes research at the forefront of transformative science for the sustainable management of land, crop and natural resources which are under threat by the climate and nature crises. Its work supports thriving rural communities - and the economy - in Scotland and across the world.
At its campus in the beautiful village of Invergowrie (it also has another campus in Aberdeen), the Hutton offers a unique combination of world leading plant and data science, state of the art facilities, glasshouses, polytunnels, first class arable and horticultural land, technological and digital innovation plus globally renowned expertise.
The Hutton’s history stretches back over 100 years thanks to its various predecessor bodies. It has a worldwide reputation for research in soft fruit and is responsible for the development of the Tayberry which is a cross between a blackberry and raspberry; and runs the world’s leading blackcurrant breeding and research programme on behalf of SBF GB&I which produces Ribena and which only uses blackcurrants grown in the UK.
It is also a global expert in barley cultivation and has assembled and genetically characterised over 5000 diverse barley lines including original wild barley sources to use in developing barley which is more sustainable.
It is also responsible for many varieties of potatoes and is home to the Commonwealth Potato Collection, a collection of around 1500 accessions of about 80 wild and cultivated potato species held in trust for humanity by the Hutton.
More below, and on the Investment Opportunities page.
International Barley Hub and Advanced Plant Growth Centre
Scotland’s pre-eminent interdisciplinary scientific research organisation, The James Hutton Institute undertakes research at the forefront of transformative science for the sustainable management of land, crop and natural resources which are under threat by the climate and nature crises. Its work supports thriving rural communities - and the economy - in Scotland and across the world.
In 2018, the Hutton was awarded £62m through the Tay Cities Region Deal from the UK and Scottish Governments in 2018, to build a brand-new building to house the International Barley Hub (IBH) and the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC). The IBH’s research is critical to ensuring the long-term sustainability of industries which rely on barley including the drinks and livestock feed industries and is also exploring the potential of barley to become more of a mainstream foodstuff; and the APGC operates in the precision and controlled environment agriculture and agrotechnology sector which is expected to be worth $23bn globally by 2025.
This new building offers an auditorium which can hold up to 160 people and has other spaces which can be hired externally for meetings, workshops and different types of gatherings. In addition, the presence of scientists on site presents opportunities to invite them to attend conferences to talk about their work.