Biggest free range unit to cost £10 million
The massive free range unit planned for the Scottish borders will cost £10 million, if given a planning go-ahead.
The size of the investment has been revealed, for the first time, by the man who wants to build ten 32,000-bird buildings on one farm near West Lynton, 18 miles from Edinburgh.
The plan has caused a storm of controversy among local residents who have filed a string of objections on the grounds that include smell, traffic generation and even the threat of avian influenza.
It is also at the centre of interest in the egg industry because Mr Campbell’s company, Glenrath Farms, has been at the forefront of movement into multi-tier systems. The company already operates 32,000 bird units—two 16,000-bird multi-tier sheds linked by an egg handling facility and surrounded by 80 acres—on other sites.
The new development, which would constitute the biggest free range farm in the world, is planned for Blythbank Farm, formerly a sheep and dairy unit run by the Roslin Institute.
The local authority has already declined planning permission for the first of the ten sheds on the farm until a £20,000 environmental impact study has been completed.
Mr Campbell has also begun a public relations offensive. In an interview with local newspaper, The Courier, he says that the need for the new super-unit is down to the sheer size of the demand for free range eggs.
He reveals that he has invested £20 million in the past five years on new packing facilities and on enriched cages. But he believes these are the last cages Glenrath will ever install.
“The drive for other methods of egg production has not come from EU regulations or government restrictions,” he says, “it has come simply from supermarket customers and we have to meet that desire.”
He insists that the 3500 square metre buildings he wants to erect are not particularly high and with green cladding “are not as intrusive as might be imagined”.
The main part of the farm is in a valley without a house in sight, he insists, and is also out of sight of the main A701 road. Access roads and electricity can be put in with “minimum impact,” says Mr Campbell. The project would create 60 jobs.
Glenrath, which had a turnover of £24 million last year, supplies both Tesco and Asda. In the interview Mr Campbell says the supermarkets “have made Glenrath”.
“You have to win their confidence as partners. They have brought us up to their standards.”
Mr Campbell, whose farming operations cover 10,000 acres and who, with 200 staff, ranks as the biggest employer in Peebleshire, has clearly won the support of his local media.
The Courier concludes that the Blythbank scheme is a test case “to prove whether the land is still to be used for producing food or whether it is to be allowed to simply be a backdrop to a rural lifestyle for those who can afford free range eggs but would prefer not to be too close to the means of production.”
Just how big are free range flocks?
Figures supplied to the Ranger by Deans Foods, which as the country’s biggest egg packing operation is handling the eggs from nearly five million free range and organic birds, reveal that the average flock size, including organic, is still less than half the maximum allowed by industry assurance schemes.
The average number of birds in one flock is 7307 while the average farm keeps a total of 13,645 birds housed in two flocks. Less than 10 per cent of Deans’ supplying farms have four or more flocks while nearly half have only one flock.
Both the Lion code and the RSPCA’s Freedom Food scheme permit a maximum flock size of 16,000 birds, but flocks have to be split into colonies of 4000 once flock size exceeds 6000 birds.
