Yoghurt factory saved from closure to get £1m upgrade

A south of Scotland yoghurt factory which was saved from closure four years ago is to undergo a £1m upgrade.

It will allow the Rowan Glen site near Palnure in Galloway to expand the range of items it produces.

A buyout - backed by South of Scotland Enteprise (SOSE) - helped to save the plant after previous owners Dale Farm decided it was no longer needed.

Now the company is committing more than £600,000 to its improvement plans along with £400,000 from the Scottish government's food and drink processing scheme.

Rowan Glen makes about 20 million pots and bottles of dairy products from its base near Newton Stewart.

All the milk it uses is sourced from farms in Dumfries and Galloway.

The business was resurrected by a small team of nine after its closure in 2022 and it has built its operations back up since then.

The latest investment - due to be completed by March next year - will upgrade key areas of the factory, improve its layout and install new production equipment.

Managing director Alan Baxter, who led the buyout, said the upgrades will allow greater flexibility in the products being made, and also introduce the ability to make cottage cheese.

Baxter said there had been a real danger the business could disappear for good but the latest investment was a "massive step" for the firm which has built back up to about 30 staff.

He said: "I think it's really positive, it really secures the current jobs that we have, producing our yoghurt range and it creates some new jobs to produce cottage cheese.

"The size of that is a wee bit unknown at this stage, but we've certainly got a lot of interest in the cottage cheese, so we're keen to get moving on it.

"It means a lot of hard work, I'm not going to lie, but we enjoy that and we're going to look forward to improving the company."

He said the buyout had given the firm a "stable platform" which it could build on with benefits for the wider area.

"We're using a lot of the local milk from surrounding farms, which definitely helps the farmers.

"I think at the minute there's a bit of a surplus on milk, so the farmers are always keen to see additional outlets for the milk.

"And obviously that's a major benefit because otherwise they'll have to ship the milk further afield, and that adds a bit of cost to the transport of the milk."

He added that the investment was a "big testament" to all the work of the team at the factory which had allowed the business to "grow and thrive".