Scotland’s experts on farmer co-ops and food industry collaboration, we work with food and farming businesses to make them more profitable, competitive, and sustainable - #workingtogether to shape the future, today.
All our work helps facilitate farmers and food and drink businesses to work together effectively. Over the years we've expanded and developed subsidiary businesses - getting the right people together and making innovative advancements - to help benefit food, farming and rural Scotland.
Developing staff capability is one of the most effective ways to improve a co-op’s performance. Check out our events and training programme - most of which are open to non co-op members too.
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See below for all the latest news, views and updates from us here at SAOS. Find all our latest videos on YouTube at: SAOS - working together in food and farming
28 January 2025
We had a truly excellent day and evening in our 'new conference home' of Crieff Hydro on the 16th of Jan 2025.
If you missed the most recent SAOS Conference or want a recap, catch up on much of the day with the links below to PDFs of our speakers' presentations.
UPDATE! We've now also posted the videos of these presentations on our SAOS YouTube Channel too (please subscribe and you'll get an alert about future posts).
Opening this year's conference was our own Allene Bruce, who set the scene by exploring some key factors around resilience, and how we can help build greater resilience into our supply chains, sharing some recent SAOS work as part of the Scotland Food & Drink Partnership.
Next up was Ged Futter, who shared with us his considerable experience in the retail sector, as well as some key findings from his OFC 2024 report ‘Is our UK food supply chain broken?’, before focusing on some key points and recommendations around our supply chains and dealings with retailers.
(Ged, far right, and Allene, took part in the first of our Q&A sessions which were hosted by James Withers).
Our first afternoon session focused on 'Co-ops in Action' and we heard from several of our member co-ops about their work to maximise opportunities and make the most of the challenges in their sectors.
We heard first from soft fruit growers Angela Porchez of Angus Growers and John Gray of Angus Soft Fruits.
Next up, we heard from Andy McGowan, Managing Director of Scottish Pig Producers (who is now, as he hinted on the day, Co-general Manager of the newly-formed United Pig Co-operative, a merger of SPP, Scotlean and Thames Valley Cambac.).
We also heard about Scottish Quality Crops' collaborative work in cereals through a video we made with them (you can watch our SQC video on YouTube here), and from Teresa Dougall, their MD, who joined the co-op Q&A panel (right).
Our third session was focused on Dairy, and we heard from SAOS's Hamish Walls, who introduced the session with a summary of the background and challenges of the dairy industry and the necessity for creating Dairy Producer Organisations.
He was then joined on stage by representatives from the four Dairy Producer Organisations in the UK: from right to left, Hamish; (our own Chairman) Rory Christie of the Milk Suppliers Association; Grant Hartman of MMG Dairy Farmers Ltd, Max Sealy of Selkley Vale Ltd and Ian Harvey of Davidstow Creamery.
Our Chief Executive, Tim Bailey, closed the afternoon session with a call to action, stressing the power and potential solutions that co-operatives offer to so many current challenges.