The smell of herbs

On Thursday 24th February I visited Scotherbs in Longforgan, a producer, supplier and manufacturer of fresh culinary herbs and salad leaves. The great story behind this company; Robert Wilson, a dairy farmer has trouble with pricing and makes the hard decision to sell his entire herd. Not sure what to do next, but noticing a gap in the market, the farmer and his wife plant herbs in the farmhouse garden and in 1984 Scotherbs was born! Dramatically increasing in size over the years, helped along with a contract with Wm Low in 1989 which eventually became part of the Tesco group in 1994.

Scotherbs are now based across the road (a.k.a. the small A90) from the original farmhouse in a custom built packing facility and supply nationally to Tesco, have Scottish listings with Adsa, Morrisons and Aldi and have a branded seasonal lising with Asda. They also supply to wholesalers and caterers directly, in Scotland.

On the factory tour, around the 2000sq metre pack house, everywhere smelled of luscious, fresh herbs. The employees (of which there are 130 seasonal staff, all directly employed which means no agency staff) were insistent that they had gotten so used to it that they did not smell it any more. How unfortunate, I thought.

Quality monitoring and control was of an incredibly high standard, which they would have to be having such a lucrative deal with Tesco, we were shown through each step in the process with regard to quality control mostly. One person in the chain stood out for her intense passion of what she was doing. She, as a supervisor, was individually and wholly responsible for finished pack inspection. When detailing to us what her job actually entailed, I could see 
that she understood completely that as the last point of control before the product arrived at the supermarket, her keen eye was entirely responsible.

This is an old picture, they have a completely different packing system now, but I think it helps you to imagine the glorious smell.

We even got a free goody bag with the usual suspects of rosemary, thyme, coriander, parsley and mint. And they threw in a branded pen and pencil.


The website is here if  you're intrigued.