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Highland Spring talks three big wins 

What can you achieve through strategic investment in your business? The team at Highland Spring, Scotland’s favourite bottled water, talks about three recent successes driven by capital investment.

Authors: Highland Spring’s John Jarvie, HR Director (pictured), and Claire Jenkins, HR Business Partner

Investing in our culture and operations

"We’re a relatively small company. But we proudly compete with – and often surpass – our larger rivals. And we have ambitious plans for the next five years.

"Recent strategic investments, supported in part by Scottish Enterprise, returned our best ever performance, and we’re on track to beat these in 2024.

"Our focus is on:

  • Growing internationally
  • Innovating our product (including the introduction of a new flavours range)
  • Boosting productivity and efficiency using automation and increased employee numbers

"To help us get there, we’re undertaking the largest capital investment in our history – £10 million in 2024 – to build a new bottling line and warehouse.

"We're working to embed changes across the business, particularly in three major projects: cultural transformation, leadership development, and capital investment."

Pictured: Claire Jenkins, HR Business Partner, Highland Spring

About Highland Spring

  • 40 years

    of Highland Spring, which has been run by the same family since 1976.

  • 400 people

    work for Highland Spring across two main sites.

  • 500 million litres

    of sustainably sourced Scottish water is bottled by the company each year.

  • 2,500 acres

    of wild, protected land is owned by the company.

  • 15 years

    of filtering through rock before our drinking water reaches us.

Find out more about Highland Springopens in a new window 

Three ways we've boosted our business with Scottish Enterprise support

"Our work with the team at Scottish Enterprise has inspired us to be ambitious, take calculated risks, and create a sustainable growth path that benefits both our business and our employees.

"It was a company-wide effort. We engaged with over 70% of our workforce in the process, to make sure our updated values are meaningful and authentically reflect the needs of our employees.

"The impact has been significant:

  • Our values are now embedded throughout the employee lifecycle, including performance management
  • Employee engagement survey results confirm the new values are embraced across the organisation
  • We’re expanding our operational and business workforce by 2025

"In the last two years, our business has significantly surpassed performance and financial targets while growing our workforce by around 10%. It’s clear that these results are partly thanks to the changes we have made in culture and ways of working."

"We know that our leaders have the greatest influence on workplace culture. The team at Scottish Enterprise has helped us create a leadership framework that aligns with our values and behaviours.

"They supported a learning needs analysis, identifying areas where our leaders require backing. This has helped us define what successful leadership looks like here at Highland Spring.

"We’ve designed a three-year leadership learning journey to equip leaders with a consistent approach to management across the organisation. Our goal is to continue building an engaged, motivated workforce that empowers people to thrive."

"We’re currently in an exciting period of growth. Our new production line is set to be completed by the end of this year.

"The capital investment we're making directly supports increased productivity, extra growth capability, and operational efficiency. This will allow us to drive collective gains across our business.

"This year alone, we've seen improvements in:

  • Sales
  • Product innovation
  • Operational processes
  • Productivity

"We wouldn’t have been able to take such ambitious steps in the design and delivery of our recent projects.

"Knowing that we could rely on support from the Scottish Enterprise team helped us to avoid restrictive thinking. We could explore all possibilities. This meant our big ideas could grow."

Highland Spring headquarters at Blackford, Kinross

Got a question?

If you'd like to learn more about capital investment opportunities and driving change in your business, you can speak to one of our advisers. 

Phone: +44 300 013 3385 opens in a new window