The 15th day of our excursion dawned cloudy. The group seemed a bit weary during the hotel breakfast with two weeks of the trip already behind and 3 more days ahead. Our trip’s last excursion was in a couple of hours. We hopped on a minibus that took us to the production facility of Mackie’s of Scotland in Westertown, Rothienorman.
Our host, the finance director of the company, welcomed us to the farm and we headed to the wind turbines nearby. Mackie’s of Scotland is a company utilizing renewable energy in their ice cream and chocolate production. The director explained that the production facility has around 5 MW of installed renewable energy production of which 2.5 MW of wind power is directly connected to the facility. The rest, a combination of wind and solar power, is currently connected to the grid.
The installed capacity of the wind turbines connected directly to the facility amounts to 65 % of the facility’s energy consumption. The rest of the electricity is bought from the grid. The company’s plan is to use its own electricity production directly and sell the excess electricity, but due to their grid connection limitations, it is currently not possible. Due to this, 75% percent of the produced electricity is directly sold to the grid. As the director explained this to us, we came across a man walking a golden retriever named Milo, who greeted us with pure happiness!
The company is quite vertically integrated as it not only produces its own energy, but also its own feed for the 300 cows that produce most of the milk for the company’s ice cream production. After seeing the energy production facilities, we went to see the cows and later had some samples of the company’s delicious ice cream and chocolate before we headed back to downtown Aberdeen for lunch.
After pastas and pizzas in our trusted restaurant Zizzi where Tuomas taught others to make serviette flowers, we divided into smaller shopping groups. Many of us wanted to buy some homecoming gifts like chocolate or whisky but some just bought a lot of Mackie’s ice cream to share. That turned out to be a good idea: the ice cream was really delicious!
When the shopping was done and hunger for ice cream satisfied, we gathered to hotel rooms to spend the evening together. Väinö is leaving one day before others, so this was the last night with him. Conversations, music, bathing. Thanking the organizers Eetu, Iida, Kasperi and Väinö for making this overseas excursion possible and successful with their great contribution.
We also talked in a smaller group about the tops of the trip. Here are the results.
Excursion: Divided answers. IceWind (day 2), Torness nuclear power station (day 9), Catapult Offshore Renewable Energy (day 11) and Mackie’s of Scotland (day 15) were mentioned. Excursions were overall very interesting.
Leisure activity: Hike to watch the erupting volcano (day 3)! Waterfalls and Reykjadalur hot river got also mentioned. Altogether, it was nice to hike and suffer a bit to see the beautiful views or jump into the warm water.
Accommodation: Oddsson hotel in Reykjavik. Waffles and rye bread at the beakfast – ”Ai että [Yummy]!”
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