Macrae

When Macrae wanted to expand from their existing site in Granton, Edinburgh, West Lothian was the obvious choice for their new state-of-the-art factory.

Macrae is owned by Grimsby giant Young's which has a turnover of £500 million and employs 1,800 people in Scotland. They claim that their Livingston plant is the UK's most up to date seafood processing facility, with double the capacity of their former plant in Granton.

Situated in Starlaw Park, the new facility supplies a vast and innovative range of quality chilled prepared seafood to Waitrose.

Employing 260 people and covering 64,000sq ft, Macrae's £10m plant is actually three separate factories in one. The first is for the cold smoking of salmon and trout, the second for the hot smoking of fish such as herring, mackerel, salmon, haddock and trout, with the third concentrating on other speciality seafood, such as shellfish, pâtés, cocktails and other value-added products.

Each of these separate parts is divided into low-care preparatory areas, cooking sections and high-care processing, packaging and dispatch. The demands of food safety make it a maze of doors - there are 150 of them in total - and 74 separate areas.

It is, says the managing director Roy Cunningham, "an incredibly complex factory". But while the Livingston plant is as high-tech as they come in terms of hygiene and technical controls, the actual mechanisation levels are paradoxically low.

Explains Cunningham: "Apart from the kilns for smoking and poaching, we favour traditional production methods over mechanical efficiency. Quality is everything to us.

"The thought that 70 per cent of our raw materials come from Scotland and are being processed in Scotland is a good one, for the people we employ and for the people in the supply chain."

Although the bulk of employees will come from Macrae's existing processing operation in Granton, Edinburgh, there will be a number of new job opportunities created as the business expands. These will be in a wide variety of posts, ranging from factory operatives to senior management.

Alan Cook, HR Manager, said: "As the business moves forward it is anticipated that up to 50 new jobs will be created in the first 12 months. These will be in a wide variety of roles and we hope to recruit as many of these as possible locally."

Roy Cunningham, Macrae Edinburgh Managing Director, said: "We have created the best environment possible for our team and through training and respect for everyone have created a business culture which continually aspires to quality.

"We are especially proud of our employee training and development programmes that allow real opportunities for career progression both at our modern Livingston facility and throughout the wider Young's business."