Senion team from HIE are in Kintyre meeting business leaders
published this on 10:07 am, Friday, 6th March, 2009Business| Community News | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
A senior team from Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is in Kintyre to look at how local partnerships can work together to tackle the challenges facing the area.
Chief Executive Sandy Cumming, Chair William Roe and HIE’s Argyll team are met business and community leaders at a dinner last night (5th March) and are making a series of visits in Kintyre today.
William Roe, Chair of HIE, says: ‘We are delighted to be in Kintyre to explore with local people the issues affecting them. Partnership between government, business and representative bodies is very important in ensuring that we can effectively tackle the considerable challenges which still affect the area’.
As well as the business dinner at Craigard House Hotel, the HIE team is visiting Campbeltown Creamery to hear about its expansion plans, golfing complex Machrihanish Dunes (winner of the Best Sporting Facility Award in the ForArgyll 2008 Awards) and RAF Machrihanish – now for sale.
It seems odd that the team is not visiting the Vestas wind turbine complex, which would be, even pre-eminently, an obviously needy target. This omission can really only be interpreted one way – that the future of the plant must now be secured. If it were not, the HIE senior team would have had a serious need to engage with workers at the plant.
On the visit as a whole, Chief Executive Sandy Cumming commented: ‘This visit is part of a series of events which we are holding across the Highlands and Islands. It is vital that at this time of global economic uncertainty we have the chance to speak first hand to our customers, partners and stakeholders’.
This sort of attention to the needs of Kintyre is very welcome. Bringing together this spectrum of expertise to familiarise itself with the area, the issues and very real potential has to be positive.
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April 5th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
as a milk supplier to campbeltown creamery , i was amazed to read of ‘expansion plans’ at campbeltown creamery . dairy farming is in decline throughout the uk and argyll and bute is no exception . the present creamery is running well below its capacity , with milk having to be brought in from as far away as ayrshire at times . the number of dairy farms , the number of dairy cows , and the amount of milk produced locally have fallen steeply in recent years , the areas milk quota is millions of litres short of being filled and milk prices paid to farmers have already been cut three times since january 09 to below the cost of production for most thus production is set to decline not increase .
i thought the idea of a new creamery , which producers were informed would be fully operational by november 2009 ( see campbeltown courier website for confirmation ) was to be more efficient ie better matched to the available milk supply therefore a downsized creamery with a greatly reduced workforce . almost everyone involved in kintyres dairy industry accepts a modern milk processing plant will require a vastly slimmed down number of workers .
those who argued that the retention of milk quota ring fencing would retain milk production in the islands area should accept the policy has been a failure and get on with building a pint sized creamery to efficiently process the milk available . the wrong headed policy on milk quotas has cost the area dearly in terms of wrecked businesses , fewer jobs and less diversification .