Angus leisure resort on course for major growth

MANAGEMENT AT Piperdam have revealed major investment plans designed to position the Angus golf and leisure resort at the upper end of the family holiday market.

The company said it had just awarded four contracts collectively worth in excess of £500,000 to local companies as it looked to grow the business through next year.

The contracts include a substantial £250,000 redesign of the centre’s signature Osprey golf course which is due to be completed by Team Niblick Ltd in the spring.

A further £150,000 contract has gone to Lamin8 Scotland to completely revamp the leisure and swimming pool facilities and provide new reception office space in the main resort complex.

Piperdam has also committed £200,000 to the construction of a new purpose-built biomass and wood storage facility — a contract which went to Scot Steel of Forfar — and has established a long-term link with Dundee-based consultancy Hydroscot Services to roll out renewable energy systems across the Piperdam estate.

In addition to ongoing developments, Piperdam has just been granted permissions for a new-build activity centre on site, and a further eight lodges are also to be added — a potential further investment in the region of £1.2 million.

Managing director Phil Mulholland said the aim was to ensure the complex was “on the map” and continued to provide for the needs of the modern tourism marketplace.

He also said the addition of biomass renewable energy systems had helped push forward the development of Piperdam into a new era.

“Next to wages, energy is the biggest cost we have here at the site,” Mr Mulholland said.

“We had an LPG (liquid petroleum gas) bill of something between £180,000 and £200,000 a year.

“When Scott Gaffney approached me from Hydroscot Services and started to look at the energy bills he said to me that we should definitely go on to biomass woodchip supply.

“We commissioned Scott to do a report, and when I read the report it was a no-brainer.

“We set about doing the main complex, where we had a gas bill of £100,000 a year.

“We have demolished that gas bill down to £15,000 a year now.

“We are also reducing consumption at our holiday lodges and we have started with 15 of our biggest gas guzzlers.

“It was a big job but we now have that up and running, and I have a vision to have the whole of Piperdam running on wood-chip supplied hot water and heating.

“Everything we have done so far has been a retrofit, but when we build the next eight lodges there will be no gas tank required — it will only be for cooking now.” The new lodges will take the total to 70. Piperdam has permission to build a further 24 units thereafter, which would take lodge bed capacity on site to around 480 and give ‘large hotel’ status.

On completion of the current development plans, estimates have placed Piperdam’s annual economic impact on the region at approximately £28.6m.

The resort employs 95 full and part-time staff.

Mr Mulholland said: “The sustained growth, development and diversification taking place at Piperdam will have a substantial effect on the local economy as we continue to push the boundaries in sustainable leisure and tourism in Dundee and Angus.”

Operations director Clare McNally said it was an exciting period for the resort, with occupancy levels consistently above 80% helping it achieve its most successful year since it began trading in 1998.

“We have seen major growth at Piperdam over the last few years with the building of new lodges, and now we are at the stage where we are going to be upgrading the leisure facilities,” she said.

“We used to see ourselves as the mini CenterParcs but we now remove the ‘mini’ from that.”

Managing director Phil Mulholland at the biomass plant, which he said had helped push forward the development of Piperdam into a new era.

An impression of the proposed activity centre.