Farm visit – Loch Etive
New dawn for
trout farmer
Scotland’s first female fish farm boss recounts her rise to the top
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LISON Hutchins may appear surprised to find herself Scotland’s first female fish farming director – she still smiles at the title – but there was nothing accidental about her rise to the top. After she landed the role as Dawnfresh Farming boss last November, she wanted a few months ‘to feel comfortable in the job’ before announcing it to the world, and the news seeped out eventually in March. By the time Fish Farmer visited Hutchins at the trout producer’s Loch Etive site, she was giving every impression of being born to the task- on top of the daily challenges and with an obvious rapport with her staff. She succeeds Stewart Hawthorn, who has left to pursue his own projects, which include going into business with his wife, selling net cleaners. When Hawthorn was brought back to Scotland from Canada (where he was managing director of Grieg Seafood in BC) in 2016, Hutchins made it clear she was after his position. Farming operations development manager at the time, she had, in fact, applied for the promotion when Gideon Pringle vacated the post to return to Marine Harvest Scotland. ‘For whatever reasons – experience reasons probably- they got Stewart in and it was like it was a knock back, but I felt it was important to make it clear that’s what I wanted,’ said Hutchins. She said the company were great about it - ‘they said, we don’t want you to go anywhere, we see the potential in you as well and we want to support you, and if we bring someone in we want them to mentor you. I think part of Stewart’s remit coming in was that. ‘I think it’s important to make it clear to yourself and to make it clear to everyone else what you want to do in your career.’ She admits she was taken aback at the speed of her subsequent progress, although she believed her dreams were achievable. ‘I felt that at some point Stewart would ultimately move on but in five years, eight years – I didn’t expect it to be quite so soon, just over a year. So I
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Farm Visit - Dawnfresh.indd 36
Left: Alison Hutchins. Above: At Loch Etive. Opposite: The Etive 4 site. Photographs: Chris Lavis-Jones; Scott Binnie
think it was the timing that was more of a surprise than the actual being asked to take it on.’ Hawthorn taught her about budgets and strategy, and ‘to support your team to the best of your ability to make sure they can do their job to the best of their ability’ ‘Always think about the fish and always think about the staff- that was great advice and every day I go back to that – if there’s talk on strategy or political talk I go back to the ‘you have to look after your staff, you have to look after your fish’.’ Hutchins is originally from Glasgow and her interest in fish came from watching David Attenborough programmes and visiting sea life centres as a child. ‘I thought going diving would be fantastic but how do you get a career and money out of it to support myself and my family? But I saw there was an industry that could cater for that.’ She started doing marine biology at Stirling but switched to aquaculture, completing both her BSc and masters, before doing research jobs to bring in some money. She did consider an academic path but it was not for her. ‘I seriously considered it but I really wanted to be hands on and make a difference. And the academic route would have been very lab based and that’s
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09/05/2018 16:24:36