Scotty Brand will be welcoming tomatoes back to its product range this Spring after an initiative to bring back Scottish tomatoes to the commercial growing market.
The tomatoes are grown at Standhill Farm near Hawick in the Scottish Borders and Scotty Brand has been working with farmer Jim Shanks since last summer to overcome the various challenges of growing the crop in Scotland.
Michael Jarvis, head of marketing for Scotty Brand said; “We are very excited that tomatoes will be part of our product range again. Scotty Brand is always looking for new and exciting seasonal products to add to its portfolio and we have been searching for a suitable commercial tomato growing partner for a while. Scotland’s tomato-growing industry was previously a thriving industry and we are thrilled to see that tomatoes are growing commercially again in the country.”
Originally purely a dairy farm, Standhill Farm (home to the Shanks family who are 5th generation farmers and 3rd generation farmers at Standhill) has diversified to become the only commercial grower of Scottish tomatoes.
Jim Shanks, said; “We are delighted to be working with Scotty Brand to grow Scottish tomatoes. We have built a bespoke, state of the art greenhouse to house and grow the crop and we also brought in our tomato expert Mark Wilkinson who has over 28 years’ experience of glasshouse growing, and now lives on the farm.”
There will be two packs of Scotty Brand tomatoes available; Annamay, a Cocktail-on-the-Vine variety ; and Sweetelle, a baby plum tomato variety.
The tomato crop is being farmed especially for Scotty Brand with the first batch ready to retail in spring. Scotty Brand Tomatoes will be available in Wholefoods Giffnock, selected Morrison and Waitrose stores, and in all Lidl stores in Scotland from early April until early November.
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