Stewarts of Tayside - based in Perth - is one of the UK’s largest growers and packers of swede. Its new advanced vegetable handling machinery will see a 25% increase in the tonnage of washed and packaged swedes.
The new machinery, funded by HSBC UK’s Equipment Finance team, will extract soil and stones to enhance the washing process. It also has an automated weight grader, which improves Stewarts of Tayside’s accuracy when assigning swede sizes for different customer requirements. The investment has helped the company manage the 20% increase in demand during the pandemic. It means the company will be able to accommodate more business should demand increase again.
Liam Stewart, managing director at Stewarts of Tayside, told scottishfinancialnews.com: “The new equipment has been critical to our success over the last 12 months. Not only has it enhanced our production grading capabilities and efficiencies, but it has also reduced our carbon footprint and helped to avoid waste, which has meant more swedes making it to supermarket shelves. We’re an ambitious company and have grown year-on-year since starting out, so we’re thankful for HSBC UK’s support which has helped us to improve the quality of our product as we look to the future.”