Speyside Specialities – Featured Producer

David, Speyside Specialities is a long-running family business. Can you tell us a little about the origins and the history of the business and its current set up?

In 1898 Robert Lawson, a grain merchant from the Calton district in Glasgow, had fallen on hard times. He moved to Dunfermline in Fife with his wife and three children armed with some recipes of traditional Scottish meat products given to him by a sympathetic friend. He set about producing ‘puddings’ from an outhouse at his home, which he sold from a hand barrow to communities up and down the Fife coast. The business grew and gradually became a general provisions merchants at Castleblair.

In 1933 the third eldest son Frank Lawson acquired bacon-curing facilities off the Original Bacon Curing Company, which had gone bankrupt during the great depression. It was here that the business transferred in its entirety to Aberdeen Dyce. The business flourished after the cessation of hostilities of the Second World War and grew to becoming a respected household name. It wasn’t till the mid 60’s that the entire shareholding of the company was acquired by Unilever PLC.

Francis Lawson, Frank’s son, was appointed Chief Executive and ran the business till 1978 when he retired from the meat business. Not long after this Unilever closed the operation in Aberdeen. In 1997 Francis and his son [me] acquired the controlling interest in a meat manufacturing operation “Stewart of Buckie” thus re-entering into the meat industry. The name was changed to Speyside Specialities and has flourished since then continuing in the tradition of making traditional Scottish ‘puddings’! In 2009 I took on the full ownership and running of the company.

How important is it to you to maintain the family tradition and how does that impact the decision-making for the business?

Well we don’t wander about with a handbarrow full of our goods any more, however where as far as possible we have kept to our roots. Despite modernisation and new techniques the basic principles remain the same. In regards to decision-making I have a few rules that I always abide by: To produce the best quality products that we are able to. To be respectful to our customers and suppliers providing products of the highest quality at fair and competitive prices.

Your company maxim is “Try a Taste of Scotland”. Do you source all your ingredients locally? Is that an important factor in maintaining the family legacy?

If it is possible we will source our ingredients locally, however for certain ingredients this is just not possible. For example all our Oatmeal, which is a main ingredient in a lot of our products, comes from Grampian Oat Products just 30 minutes down the road. All our beef and lamb comes from the Grampian or Highland regions. However pepper just isn’t grown in Scotland. Being able to buy the majority of our ingredients from Scotland is an important factor to us as a company, we are proud to produce traditional Scottish produce for the Scottish market and beyond. If we say it’s Scottish then it has to be from Scotland.

Traditionally, Scottish Black Pudding includes beef suet and oatmeal. How true do you remain to the traditional and original family recipe?

The basic recipe remains the same using pigs blood, oatmeal, suet and spices, however this has been tweaked over the years to better the product. For example in years gone by we used fresh onion, but this produced a slight tartness to the flavour, which even changed throughout the year due to availability of fresh onion. Now we use a kibbled onion, which we reconstitute gaining consistency and giving slightly sweet flavour.