SRUC student project has ‘goat’ great potential

Three Rural Business Management students from SRUC’s Craibstone campus in Aberdeen were awarded i-pads from Converge - which works in collaboration with Scotland’s universities to uncover emerging spinouts and start-ups - after winning the Group Business Planning competition.

The students were asked to choose a farm, food or business product/service and investigate the benefits of forming a marketing or purchasing co-operative before preparing a detailed development and marketing plan for their proposed co-op.

Third year students Georgina Milne, 20, from Oyne, near Insch, Alison Rotheray, 31, from Turiff, and Emma Maguire, 21, from Montrose, put forward a proposal for a co-operative goat meat business for North-East Scotland, with 30 founder members dedicating part of their farms to the production of kids.

In their report, they described goat meat as the UK’s fastest-growing meat market and wrote: “Goat is a very healthy meat with lots of flavour and a growing restaurant and home-cooking market, so North-East Goat Meat has the potential to become very lucrative for its members in time.”

Teresa Shutter, Head of Innovation Hub at SRUC, who judged the competition, said: “Many congratulations to the four finalist groups who presented thoroughly-researched market opportunities, and especially to the North-East Goat Meat Co-operative for their excellent business plan. I was impressed by all the finalists’ high standard of work.”