The Mackie’s story
The Mackie family have been farming at Westertown farm since 1912 and Mackie’s of Scotland is now a well-known Scottish food brand. Mackie’s were formerly a milk retail company and in 1986 began making ice cream.
Mackie’s ice cream is now firmly established as one of the UK’s most popular take-home ice creams, and we are continually seek new ideas or “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” for the business and brand development. We are committed to continual innovation and improvement — summed up by our late Chairman’s favourite saying “No Change, No Chance!”. Over the years we have created several innovative and award winning products — not all of which have survived.
Discover the Mackie's story by viewing the timeline below.
In 1986 we began making real dairy ice cream, in the corner of our milk parlour, with the cream surplus arising from a market shift to semi-skimmed milk.
By 1993, the ice cream sales had increased to a turnover of £2.5 million and the traditional byre and old mill were converted to a modern ice cream dairy.
In 1995 the Highland range of ice cream was launched complete with Drambuie, Toffee Fudge and Vanilla flavours.
In 1996 the New Product Development Kitchen was added and our “funky Scottish” flavours — Macawack, Loch Ness Mudster and Verry Berry.
1997 saw launch of our splendid Ice Cream Truffles and was the year we first achieved the Investor’s in People accreditation.
In 1998 we made a ‘Mackie’s with More’ range, with dual branded partners Walkers Ginger Chocolate and Baxter’s Vintage Marmalade ice cream flavours and developed a soft scoop strawberry ice cream for children.
In 2000, the farms were consolidated to the current home farm base of 1600 acres and in 2001 initial work to install a new cow friendly automatic milking system began.
In 2001 we first made Cream of Scottish, a soft scoop vanilla ice cream in 2 litre tubs and Vibrant, a Strawberry & Raspberry dairy sorbet with a drop of happiness.
2002 saw first export of Mackie’s ice cream to South Korea where we were official ice cream suppliers to the world cup.
In 2004 we made Low Fat Chocolate Iced Dessert – suitable for diabetics.
In 2005 Mackie’s became electricity generators with investment in their first wind turbine, and two more were added in 2007 to bring total capacity to 2.5 MW.
In 2006 production machinery was added to raise capacity in the ice cream dairy to 6,000 litres per hour and up to 15 million litres per year.
Two more wind turbines were added in 2007 to bring total capacity to 2.5 MW.
2008 we launched 100% iced fruit smoothies in two flavours, Mango & Orange and Blueberry and Raspberry.
Diversification and use of the farm spring water led to launch of Mackie’s Ice Cubes in 2004, at first called Icy Glen and re-branded as Mackice in 2009.
Mackie’s launched a new range of potato crisps in June 2009 in partnership with the Taylor family and their Taypack potato growing and processing company.
After many years of planning and growing a shelter belt, our farm arboretum was planted in 2009.
In 2010 we began making our own tubs.
In 2011 Mackie’s created “Extra Posh” ice creams with portraits of Jersey cows sporting tiaras on the tub.
In 2012 Mackie’s launched the Indulgent range of ice cream with Butterscotch, Strawberry, Rum & Raisin and Toffee Apple.
In 2013 we added Madagascan Vanilla and Cookie Biscuit flavours to our indulgent range. We also made a new Damson & Oat flavour for our food services range of ice cream flavours. This new website was born and Mackie’s went on Television with the Simply Creamy advert.
In 2014 Mackie's launched a new range of chocolate bars in flavours reminiscent to the ice cream- Traditional, Honeycomb, Dark 70% Cocoa and Dark Mint.
In March 2015 we added two new indulgent flavours to the range - Salted Caramel and White Chocolate & Coconut
A biomass heating system, 4th wind turbine and new 10 acre site of Solar PV panels with capacity of 1.8 MW were installed.
Halldis & Maitland's Scholarship for Renewable Energy at Aberdeen University was established, with first recipient student David Burr beginning the MSc course in September.
Mackie’s start making Chocolate in our new factory on the farm.
Chocogayle and Jamie-Lee are appointed as our Chief Chocolate Tasters – with the sweetest job in the world!
Indulgent Sicilian Lemon Meringue & Scottish Tablet flavours were added to the range.
Mackie’s ice cream has its 30th birthday! Celebrations include an anniversary tub sporting the original design.
Indulgent Chocolate Orange was a popular limited edition ice cream flavour for the Autumn/ Winter season - selected with help of a consumer vote
Lots of fun with our country moo-sic experiment! Thank you to Colin Clyne for joining in with live performances! We played Colin’s music to our cows – with evidence suggesting a real impact on some of the cows’ behaviour with increased visits to the milking robot.
Indulgent St Clements added to the limited edition range -a classic flavour combination or Oranges and Lemons - perfect for the summer days.
We commissioned a series of portraits by Broaddaylight photographers - to capture images of all our staff in their different roles – see Faces of Mackie’s page to see the portraits. This is dedicated in thanks to the work of all our staff in contributing to the success & adaption of our business.
Caramel Biscotti joined the limited edition range after proving especially popular at the Royal Highland Show & with our Friends of Mackie’s consumer poll.
We featured on BBC One “Eat Well For Less”– it was a great opportunity for us to show how we make real dairy ice cream here on the farm. The presenter Chris Bavin did a blind taste of products and immediately identified and preferred the real dairy ice cream. ‘Taste the Dairy Difference’ becomes one of our brand messages.
We opened our first Ice Cream Parlour – Mackie’s 19.2 in Aberdeen – showcasing a new hand made selection of ice cream flavours along with cannolis, ice cream lollies, crepes, waffles & a new range of gift chocolates. The name describes the number of miles from the Farm to the Parlour.
Indulgent Mango and Passionfruit flavour is our latest limited edition flavour for the summer season We begin our campaign to ‘Celebrate the Summer” even if the weather here can leave a lot to be desired!
