Debt and feud spell the end for pork producer

The Scotsman, 17 March 2004 

JOHN ROBERTSON and FRANK URQUHART 

SCOTPIGS, Scotland’s second largest pork producer which 
has been plagued for years by allegations of appalling 
standards of animal welfare, was finally wound up yesterday 
following a bitter feud between the company’s leading directors. 

A judge’s decision to bring in provisional liquidators to 
take over the running of the company marked the end of the 
reign of Arthur Simmers, the Aberdeenshire farmer nicknamed 
"King Arthur", and one of the most controversial figures in 
Scottish agriculture. 

Mr Simmers, a former chairman of the Scottish Pig Association, 
set up Scotpigs six years ago after his previous pig empire, 
A Simmers Ltd, crashed with debts of £10 million. 

Last December, Scotpigs was expelled from the industry’s 
Quality Meat Assurance Scheme after animal-welfare activists 
secretly filmed the squalid conditions in which pigs were 
being reared at a number of the company’s farms. 

The decision left Scotpigs without a Scottish market for 
the 150,000 pigs which the company produces each year, worth 
an estimated £6 million in sales. 

Yesterday, at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Lady Paton 
ordered that the company should be wound up after she was 
told that Scotpigs had debts of more than £2 million. 

The decision was last night welcomed by Advocates for Animals, 
the organisation which first produced the video evidence 
uncovering the appalling conditions in which pigs were being 
kept at Scotpigs’ farms. 

Yvonne Taylor, the organisation’s campaigns manager, said: 
"Whilst Advocates for Animals welcomes the news that Scotpigs 
is closing, it is a shocking indictment on our legislation 
that Scotpigs is being closed purely on financial grounds." 

Lady Paton’s decision to call in provisional liquidators 
followed a long-standing feud between Mr Simmers, of Mains 
of Bogfechel, Whiterashes, Aberdeenshire, and James Innes, of 
Dunscroft, Huntly, his co-director at Scotpigs. 

Mr Innes, who had been a customer of Mr Simmers’s former 
company, provided significant new capital in 1998 when the 
business ran into financial difficulties, becoming a 50 per 
cent shareholder and a director of Scotpigs. 

But the court was told that the business continued to suffer 
various problems, including outbreaks of foot-and-mouth 
disease and the pig equivalent of AIDS. The Simmers family 
tried but failed to remove Mr Innes as a director and also 
failed to buy him out. Mr Innes, in turn, petitioned the 
court to have Scotpigs wound up under the Insolvency Act 
1986. 

Lady Paton said: "There is a deadlock, making the proper 
running of the business impossible. The Simmers family, 
who own 50 per cent of the shares, are at complete 
loggerheads with [Mr Innes] who owns the other 50 per cent. 
The two directors have no working relationship. They cannot 
agree on fundamental matters. They do not have adequate 
communication." 

Last night, the future of Scotpigs, which has a workforce 
of 110 and farms in Aberdeenshire, West Lothian and Tayside, 
remained uncertain. 

A Scotpigs spokesman said: "We are very disappointed at Lady 
Paton’s verdict. We are seeking to appeal this decision and 
are in consultation with our legal counsel. We believe we 
can continue as a company and are intent on securing the 
future of our workforce and our farms."