Chief Executive’s Statement

Tim Bailey

As an organisation with a long history (and even longer name!) it is often challenging to explain succinctly who and what SAOS is. In simple terms, SAOS is a co-operative business, working with and for its shareholder ‘owning’ members. Those member owners, who ultimately govern us, represent over a third of Scottish agricultural output and operate across every sector, in all regions of Scotland and into the North of England. Our members are both our owners and our customers.

As every business knows, to thrive and succeed you need to remain focused on your customers and always remain relevant. SAOS as a co-op is no different. We try to ensure that all of our work, now more varied than ever, adds direct or indirect value to our members, enabling them to thrive and succeed too. This is the essence of our member value proposition.

There are eight core areas where we seek to maximise member value, ranging from lobbying and representation, specialist business support and advice, to creating collaboration and commercial opportunities. While these areas remain perpetually ‘work in progress’, it’s been a very satisfying year seeing progress in several of them gather significant momentum and providing demonstrable value to our membership.

Our proactive representation within Scottish Government (ScotGov) and other stakeholder partnerships has resulted in explicit recommendations for co-op support within the draft Agriculture Bill proposals. Also proposed are new enabling powers to incentivise greater agri-food co-operation. While these may appear relatively small in stature, they do represent firm foundations on which to develop a new agricultural policy that

How SAOS helps

Co-op business marketing and promotion

Raising your profile with your members, next generation and wider farm and food sector recognises the impact and benefits of agri co-ops. This has been reinforced by engagement and dialogue with the Rural Affairs Committee’s legislative scrutiny work. We continue to work to embed this thinking and recognition with our industry partners, including the Scotland Food & Drink Partnership, National Farmers Union of Scotland (NFUS) and the new Food and Agriculture and Stakeholder Taskforce.

The Cultivating Collaboration Network (C2N) gathered significant momentum in the last year, in terms of profile, stakeholder engagement and practical outputs for member benefit. The Green Hydrogen theme is advancing well and C2N’s work and the role of co-ops is now firmly on the radar within the ScotGov green energy directorate and funding opportunities are now being keenly scoped out. Revalorisation of agri waste has seen successful funding secured for members involved in potato production, and similar efforts are now being actively explored for our soft fruit membership with respect to the use of wool as a sustainable mulch.

A further step forward was made in the last year in our long-held priority of supporting co-op member training and development, by helping members develop their internal managerial capability and support rising talent. March saw the successful ‘graduation’ of our first Growing Tomorrow’s Leaders cohort. This programme was developed, with sponsorship support from NFU Mutual and NFUS, after significant market research with our members and industry partners clearly identified a need for an employee-based, personal and business skills leadership programme for those in the agricultural space. We are delighted to have received feedback on the positive impact Growing Tomorrow’s Leaders has made on all thirteen ‘graduates’ - including six SAOS member employees - and how their new learnings and skills can be applied over the coming months and years.

There is much to do in the year ahead to create more and enhanced benefits for our member owners and to capitalise on the opportunities ahead. However, I remain confident that, with the continued drive and professionalism of our dedicated and motivated team, there are positive times ahead for all our members and increased recognition of the values and benefits that co-ops and co-operation bring.

Creating collaboration opportunities

Developing networks and collaborative possibilities for members and industry partners

Co-op leadership learning and development

Developing your co-op team’s knowledge and competence

Added value for co-op members

Giving members priority access to a range of costeffective services