Mackie’s Aberdeenshire solar project is Scotland’s largest

Scotland’s largest solar farm will begin operating today (30 September) in Aberdeenshire.

Based at Westertown Farm, the centre of the 647ha Mackie family food and farming business, the 4ha site hosts 7,000 solar panels with a capacity of 1.8MW.

Installed by Absolute Solar and Wind, the project will produce an estimated saving of 850t of C02 emissions/year.

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Renewable energy made both economic and environmental sense, said Mackie’s’ managing director Mac Mackie. “We are constantly challenging ourselves to be as green as possible.”

This is the latest stage in renewables investment for the business, which makes 4m litres of ice-cream a year with the milk from its 300 cows. Alongside the mainly dairy and arable farming operation the family business also produces crisps and chocolate.

So far £6.5m has been invested in green-energy projects by the business, including four wind turbines and a new biomass energy plant, allowing Mackie’s to produce a total of 10.5m kWh of green electricity each year.

About 40% of that energy will be used directly on the farm, with the excess sold into the grid to renewable energy supplier Good Energy.

The Aberdeenshire farm’s business energy requirement has doubled since 2000 to about 4m kWh/year as the volume of ice-cream has increased. Work is also under way on a new chocolate factory, which will open early next year.