Building Momentum
A traditional estate with a contemporary approach to enterprise and the environment - and an eye always on the future. I hope that what you read and see here will assure you that historic values and established practice can be combined successfully with new thinking, new technology and with new forms of investment. It is important to us as a family, and to our team at Altyre, that we remain true to what preceded us. We are fortunate to have diverse inheritance here that stretches back to the Normans. But we are alert also to the challenges and opportunities that now lie ahead. I think of us all as custodians of Altyre’s past and guarantors of its future.
As for me, I am a quite typical ‘modern’ landlord. I see myself as part of the fabric of the local community and view the estate as a valuable asset to Forres and to Moray. It is a source of growing employment and local procurement and a focus for innovation and partnership. We are in the early stages of a new five year plan which will open the estate in a planned and managed way to business, to visitors and to partners as never before.
I believe that Altyre can play a significant role as one of a number of strategic ‘rural hubs’ for the Highlands – a centre of excellence bristling with enterprise and invention, protective of conservation and bio-diversity, a host to responsible development and green tourism, a guardian of heritage and tradition.
My own role involves adapting to meet the pressures of economic and environmental change and to ensure that Altyre has a sustainable future. In addition to our excellent land-based team, some with us for generations, we have equipped Altyre with first class advice and management from specialists committed to helping us build and deliver our social and economic objectives.
Already, we are working towards making Altyre self-sufficient in meeting its energy needs from its own sustainable woodland. But we plan also to ‘export’ this renewable energy into the local community. It provides a useful illustration of how we intend to better deploy our assets and to engage more directly with the world around us.
But I also see Altyre as a business with a ‘small b’. Any large estate of our type needs to diversify to survive but we wish to do so at a scale that suits our traditions, our environs and our ability to continue to manage in a hands-on way. After all, Altyre is our home and what we do here must respect our needs as a young family. We never forget that we owe everything to the estate and to its community. We owe to them a safe and familiar pair of hands and a continuing duty of care.
So, as our forebears have done for over 300 years, we will continue to invest and improve at Altyre - to create new forms of employment, land to work on, woodlands and wildlife to conserve and sustain and buildings to make new use of. I hope in due course that you play a part in our aspirations for this wonderful Scottish estate... over to you.
All best wishes
Alastair Gordon – Cumming