Environment & Sustainability | Mackie’s of Scotland
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Made with

Renewable Energy

on our farm

We generate twice as much energy as we use and are a huge step closer to achieving our goal of self-sufficiency in renewable energy, with the aim of making our ice cream the greenest in the world!

Here’s how we make our ice cream from Sky to Scoop.

 

Wind and sun generate energy to power the business
And grow the crops
To feed the cows
Who produce fresh milk and cream
To make Mackie's real dairy ice cream!

SINCE 2004, IT HAS BEEN OUR MISSION TO BECOME ‘A SCOTTISH GLOBAL BRAND FROM THE GREENEST COMPANY IN BRITAIN CREATED BY PEOPLE HAVING FUN’

FROM POWER TO PACKAGING

We’ve been making our own tubs, with tamper evident lids, since 2010. Mackie’s chocolate bars and ice cream are all made here on our Aberdeenshire farm where we like to try and make as much as we can ourselves – from power to packaging. Our tub and lid making machines transform molten plastic at over 220C into sets of two Mackie’s 1 litre branded tubs or lids in under 6 seconds. High speed and high pressure – the mould locking pressure is 240 tonnes – about 40 African elephants!

Making our own packaging means that we reduced our carbon miles – it saved 50,000 miles of transport per year from our former supplier – now it is only 200m from our packaging store over to the ice cream dairy. Transport of the raw material is also less because 1 lorry can bring the amount required to make 6 lorry loads of fully made packaging.

Our spiral freezer

EXEMPLAR LOW CARBON REFRIGERATION: WE’RE COOLING WITH HEAT!

In 2022 we completed installation of a large, super-efficient, low-carbon refrigeration plant. We’re now using sustainable energy sources – biomass heat and ammonia, a natural refrigerant gas with no climate warming threat to cool our ice cream and store it. It’s a first for Scotland, an innovative mix of technology, combining an ammonia plant and an absorption chiller to cool with heat from a new biomass boiler. It’s anticipated that this exemplar system will cut our energy use and CO2 emissions by up to 80%. Refrigeration makes up a considerable chunk of Scotland’s carbon emissions, and we invite interested businesses who also have refrigeration needs to come and learn about the system so they can improve their emissions similarly.