Farne Salmon

Farne Salmon employs more than 700 staff at its Duns site in the Scottish Borders.

The business’s main focus and passion is the manufacture of smoked salmon, cooked salmon and value added salmon, which it supplies principally to UK high street retailers. Farne also exports to key customers on the continent and more recently started exporting into Eastern European and Far Eastern markets.

The company aims to be an exemplar in good environmental practice and regularly reviews and updates its environmental policy and Environmental Management System.

VIBES credentials

Farne won the Large Management category at the 2016 VIBES Awards.

Angus Forbes, Environment and Projects Manager, says:

“Our VIBES award in 2016 was a massive pat on the back for our loyal workforce but was also a point of realisation for our senior management team that good environmental practice is not only good for our reputation and customer relations but is an exciting opportunity and necessity to make the business more successful in years to come.

“We have continued to improve our sustainability, gaining recognition and financial reward, some of these successes and goals are listed below.

“Winning the Best of VIBES award would be yet another opportunity to celebrate our successes and hopefully encourage others to learn and engage with us in creating a more sustainable Scotland.”

Environmental and business benefits

• The company holds monthly Environment meetings that are now attended by all levels of seniority up to director level and are becoming increasingly more important.
• Farne’s fortnightly “Continuous Improvement Team” meetings continue to generate resource efficiency benefits, focusing mainly of water use, effluent quality and, later this year, energy efficiency.
• Between 2014-2018, the company has cut the volume of water needed to make one tonne of product by 40%.
• In 2019, Farne is measuring its carbon footprint, to provide a marker for future energy improvements.
• Working closely with its customers, the company has set targets to make all its packaging easily recyclable by 2023; reducing the weight and size of packaging is also an ongoing goal.
• Farne only buys its raw materials from carefully managed and certified sources.
• All paper packaging is purchased from certified sources including Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
• Food waste is managed carefully, with Farne’s fish utilisation yield increasing from 61% to 81% between 2014-2018.
• Farne built recycling yards in 2014 and now separates more than 75% of its waste on site; this is then sent for recycling.
• In 2018, the company achieved its goal of “Zero to Landfill”. Waste is now a source of revenue rather than a cost to the business.

Wider benefits 

• Farne is aligning aspects of the business to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a specific focus on goal 12.3 – related to reducing food waste.
• The company is also signing up to WRAP UK’s “Food “Waste Reduction Roadmap” with the aim of halving on-site food waste by 2030.
• The company supports FareShare, the UK's largest charity fighting hunger and food waste.
• The company runs various workforce engagement/reward schemes including the Farne Stars employee recognition scheme and a suggestion box.
• In March 2019, Farne ran a “Water Awareness Week” with help from several outside organisations.  This received considerable workforce engagement.
• Farne achieved an Investors in People Award in 2017 and in 2018, the Healthy Working Lives Gold standard, for businesses working towards a planned and integrated approach to improving health, safety and wellbeing at work.
• The company has won numerous employer and environmental awards, including the Scotland Food and Drink Sustainable Business award 2017, Insider Scotland's Best Employer Awards and the 2017 Manufacturing Champions Awards for Workplace Safety Champion – Fraser Rankine.

Website: www.farnesalmon.com