Obituary: Sir John Campbell KB OBE FRAgS NSch, 1 April 1934 – 10 September 2024
Sir John Campbell, Scotland’s leading egg baron, has died aged 90 at his home on the farm. He was a true entrepreneur who spent his life promoting his business and the Glenrath brand. He was a pioneer of free-range eggs in the UK and with the help of his second son, Keith, he was passionate about the production and marketing of these eggs. Glenrath Farms went on to become Europe’s largest free-range egg producers and the first to introduce the aviary system in the UK. He argued aggressively that if free range eggs were to become mainstream and not niche, farmers would have to produce the volume to meet the market’s demand. He was just three months short of seeing his dream become reality.
John was one of three sons born in Greenock and the boys had to go to school wearing gas masks during the Second World War. Their father was a butcher who diversified into hill sheep farming and the family bought their first farm in 1950 where John and his younger brother herded sheep for the first 10 years of their lives. In 1960, they decided it was time to go their own ways and John and his wife, Cathie, bought Glenrath Farm in 1961 with 90% of the capital borrowed. After 6 months of farming sheep and cattle, their, now not so friendly, bank manager advised them that unless they made drastic changes, their business plan was not going to be viable.
Cathie was a poultry farmer’s daughter from Loch Fyne and the couple made the decision that to survive they would have to diversify. They started buying day old chicks and selling point of lay pullets and their financial pressures eased due to the quick turnover from poultry production. They built their first environmentally controlled hen shed in 1963 and then went onto grow their business organically for the next 60 years.
In the early 1970s, disaster struck as the British Egg Marketing Board (BEMB) was disbanded and the guaranteed price for eggs stopped overnight. The couple had 25,000 pullets on the ground with no one to buy them and feed companies apprehensive about selling feeding to them. John took the decision that to survive he would rent two old second hand laying farms and decided to go into egg production. He hit the streets of Edinburgh marketing his eggs to small shops from the back of a transit van. The business slowly expanded and they built their first packing station in 1976, winning their first contract with a major retailer in 1978. He was awarded a Nuffield Farming Scholarship to study Egg Marketing in 1976, leading to John and Cathie visiting many poultry farms and packing stations throughout Europe and America. This tour inspired him in the way he wanted Glenrath to develop. He was Scotland’s Poultry Person of the Year and then UK Poultry Person of the Year Award at EPIC in 2016 and was awarded lifetime achievement awards by both BFREPA and the IEC. One of his proudest moments was graduating as a fellow of the Scottish Rural University College in Glasgow in 2016.
Glenrath Farms won The Farm Business of the Year in 2004 and again in 2012. The prizes were presented in the House of Commons; John was then presented with the trophy to keep, on condition that he did not enter again.
John was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2000 for services to the poultry industry and his knighthood was for services to farming and charitable service to entrepreneurship.
If asked what his greatest achievement was, he would reply, without hesitation, that it was buying 13 farms, farming 15,000 acres, and building over 100 sheds on them for free-range egg production in his 90 years. He grew Glenrath Farms from humble beginnings to a company with a 90 million pound turnover and still went to his work every day.
Sir John’s main hobby was farming and breeding Blackface sheep, which he loved herding in the hills around his home with his collie dog and stick. One of his proudest moments was winning the local Peebles Show after 56 years of trying with a Blackface ewe. He went on to sell many high priced rams, and only last year sold a ram for £90,000. One of his passions was planting daffodils along the verges of his farms around Peeblesshire, he managed to plant over 14 miles of daffodils, which, without doubt, will be a lasting memorial to himself.
He was an elder in his local kirk for over 60 years and, although knighted in 2017, he was still happiest to be husband to Cathie, Dad to Karen, Ian, Keith and Colin. Dada to 11 grandchildren, and Great Grandad to nine great grand bairns.