Planning Consultation: Maltings at Greens of Rothes, Moray

We want to hear your views on our plans for a new state-of-the-art maltings with malting barley storage facilities on land at Greens of Rothes, Moray.



Overview

Founded in 1862, Simpsons Malt has a passion for making high-quality malts for the world’s best brewers and distillers, helping them to craft the finest beers and whiskies.

As an independent, fifth-generation family-owned business, we are steeped in tradition, yet drive innovation, and are proud of the strong ties we have built in the communities around our two current maltings in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland – where our headquarters is located – and Tivetshall St Margaret, Norfolk.

Many of our distilling customers are in the Scottish Highlands and, as a result, we are looking to build a new site in this region to serve these customers more efficiently and sustainably. This site will complement our existing operations in Berwick-upon-Tweed and in Tivetshall St Margaret.

We also have many farming customers in the Scottish Highlands and the proposed development, which will have grain storage facilities, will provide a key outlet for quality malting barley grown in Speyside.

The site is located at Greens of Rothes, on land to the north of the town between the B9015 and the River Spey.

At this early stage in the planning process, we want to hear your views on our plans for the site.



The Site

Visualisation – View south-west from Crofts Farm.

The site comprises 40 acres and Simpsons Malt entered into an agreement to acquire this land back in September 2020.

The site is currently farmland. It is bounded by the B9015 to the north and west, two residences and the Rothes CoRDe cogeneration plant to the south and the River Spey to the east. Access to the site will come via the B9015.

It is acknowledged that the proposed development will require infrastructure improvements to overcome constraints of connectivity to the centre of Rothes, while there is also a requirement for significant landscape planting to provide containment and create a settlement edge.



The Development Proposal

The malting process provides the ideal conditions for the germination of malting barley, modifying each grain evenly to an optimum condition ready for further processing by our customers. The plant at Rothes will be designed to provide for an expected sales volume of around 100,000 tonnes of malt per year. 

The process plant will consist of a mixed storage facility, hopper bottomed silos and storage sheds, providing safe storage of the barley that we will intake throughout the year.

A mixture of grain transportation equipment will be installed to transfer grain through the process and grain processing equipment for the cleaning and grading of the barley and finished malt.

There will also be an adequate process plant to provide steeping (the process whereby the barley is soaked to raise its moisture to around 40% to start germination), a process plant to germinate the barley in temperature-controlled conditions, and a kilning facility to dry the malt to allow it to be stored safely and transported easily to our customers.

In addition to the storage for barley, we will construct a malt silo complex to allow segregation and safe storage of products until ready for delivery to our customers. 

The plant will be designed to minimise its impact to the local environment, to run quietly, efficiently, and sustainably, following our strategic objective to become carbon neutral by 2030. 



Consultation

Simpsons Malt would like to hear your views on the development proposal.

Due to the ongoing travel and meeting restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, it is not currently possible to arrange face-to-face consultation events in public meeting places – hence the creation of this webpage in accordance with current Scottish Government good practice guidance.

However, should the situation change over the coming months, a public engagement event will be organised at a local venue.

A live consultation event will also take place virtually on Zoom on July 1, 2021, from 2pm-7pm (details below). This event will be advertised in the local press at least 14 days in advance in accordance with the Town & Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (Scotland) Regulations 2013.

Members of the project team will then be available during this time to discuss the proposals, while one-to-one meetings can also be organised if requested.

We’d like to invite you to submit your comments on the proposed development via the contact form below by July 22, 2021.



    Planning Process

    After this consultation period is concluded, we are planning to submit a Planning Permission in Principle application to Moray Council. This is a planning application which aims to establish the acceptability of the site for the development of a maltings with malting barley storage facilities.

    Our target for submission of the Planning Permission in Principle application is later in the summer of 2021.



    Next Steps

    Following a period of public consultation that will conclude on July 22, 2021, we will be reviewing all comments and collating these in a Pre-Application Consultation (PAC) Report with our response, explaining how the development has been altered or alternatively, providing clarification of the proposals. This report will be included in the submission for Planning Permission in Principle.

    Once that submission is made to Moray Council, it will be available to view via their website. At that stage in the process, comments can be made directly to the Council on the development proposal.



    Contact Us

    As mentioned above, a live consultation event will also take place virtually on Zoom on July 1, 2021, from 2pm-7pm. You can join the meeting by clicking on the link below:

    JOIN ZOOM MEETING ON JULY 1

    Passcode: 545272

    We’d also like to invite you to submit your comments on the proposed development via the contact form above.

    Any other correspondence can be made in writing to:

    Simpsons Malt Ltd
    Tweed Valley Maltings
    Berwick-upon-Tweed
    Northumberland
    TD15 2UZ

    Tel: 01289 330033
    Email: mark.myles@bidwells.co.uk
    Email: corinne.macdougall@bidwells.co.uk

    Please note that comments made at this stage will come only to us at Simpsons Malt and should not to be regarded as formal representations to Moray Council. Once an application for Planning Permission in Principle has been submitted, there will be an opportunity to make comments directly to the Council during the statutory consultation period.