The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Water firm to splash out on production investments
Perthshire company secures £55m finance facility from HSBC
Investments are set to flow at bottled water group Highland Spring after the Perthshire company secured a £55.5 million funding package.
Based at Blackford, Highland Spring is the UK’s leading producer and supplier of natural source bottled water.
The new finance facility from HSBC includes asset-based lending and debt refinance. A portion of the funding will be used to reduce the amount of PET plastic in manufacture and production of Highland Spring products.
This will help the business meet its goal of decreasing its use of PET plastic by 20% and increasing the recycled PET plastic content of Highland Spring bottles to 50%.
The group is also investing in a new railway siding adjacent to the main bottling plant, which will enable it to transport goods in a more environmentally sustainable way.
This will reduce the carbon footprint of the business by significantly reducing its road miles as part of its environmental commitments.
Chief operating officer Mark Steven said: “HSBC UK’s funding has been instrumental in enabling the Highland Spring Group to continue to develop and implement innovative projects which support both our operational strategy and our environmental ambitions.
“As a responsible company, we are committed to investing in solutions which will make positive changes across our business and advance our focus on providing healthy hydration in an environmentally sustainable way.”
Highland Spring employs approximately 470 people at four sites across the country.
From the group’s head office in Blackford, the business bottles around 400 million litres of natural source water this year.
HSBC UK’s relationship director Ross Keenan said: “We are proud to support businesses in the UK that are developing innovative new ways of better serving the environment and Highland Spring Group is a fantastic example of a business that is committed to developing a truly circular plastic economy in the UK and reducing its carbon footprint.”
Last month Highland Spring requested permission to build a new flood defence and storage shed at its Perthshire base. The planning application came after a report into flooding which occurred at the site in February 2017.
A recent investigation labelled the Stirling Street site as being at a “relatively high risk” of flooding from the nearby Kinpauch Burn.