The Princess Royal visits Equi's Ice Cream in Lanarkshire

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The Princess Royal Celebrates Equi’s Ice Cream’s Fundraising Success with Visit

The Princess Royal joined Equi’s Ice Cream to celebrate their fundraising in aid of cancer charity Maggie's at a visit to the Lanarkshire family business on Wednesday 25 October.

The Equi family has been making ice cream since 1922 and has raised a total of £34,051 for Maggie’s Lanarkshire over the last five years. Maggie’s provides free cancer support and information in centres across the UK.

The Princess Royal was welcomed to the new ice cream factory by David Equi, Managing Director of Equi’s Ice Cream, who said:

“Maggie’s is a charity which will always be close to my heart after my father passed away from cancer in 1985, aged 59, and my family and I saw first hand the amazing work they do. It was truly an honour to meet The Princess Royal today - we’ve been proud to share our ice cream with generations of our customers over the years and it was a privilege to let HRH The Princess Royal taste it today.”

Princess Anne spent the afternoon visiting the ice cream producer and was able to try a bespoke flavour, Salted Caramel Cookie Dough.

This special flavour was developed by the Mackellar family after their successful bid at a Maggie’s Lanarkshire fundraising event. The family was able to tour the ice cream factory and take part in a Willy Wonka-style tasting experience before donning lab coats and hairnets to create their own flavour.

Speaking about the experience, Laura Mackellar said,

“We grew up visiting Equi’s ice cream parlour in Hamilton and picking up their famous Double Cream Vanilla Ice Cream from our local supermarket so we jumped at the chance to bid for a once in a lifetime experience with proceeds going to such a good cause. We are incredibly grateful to have met The Princess Royal, who was there to celebrate all of the amazing work that is being done for Maggie’s.”

Four generations of the Equi family have been producing ice cream since 1922 with flavours like Scottish Tablet, Isle of Skye Sea Salt and Caramel and Scottish Raspberry Sorbet sold across the country.

Last year, Equi’s Ice Cream celebrated their centenary by moving into a state of the art, purpose built ice cream factory in Rutherglen. The 10,000 sq foot premises is designed to quadruple the volume of their Great Taste Award winning ice cream in the most sustainable way possible.

Today Equi’s Ice Cream is sold via more than 300 independent retailers across Scotland. Major outlets include Asda, the Co-op and Morrisons and wholesalers such as Brakes. For further information please visit www.equisicecream.com.

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Transcript
00:00 [Music]
00:07 [Music]
00:21 Hi, I'm David Eck, we're the owner of Equis Ice Cream.
00:24 We're celebrating here our 101st birthday
00:27 and my guest of honour today is Princess Anne, the Princess Royal
00:31 who's coming to officially open the premises which we actually opened two years ago
00:35 which is a state-of-the-art eco-friendly ice cream factory
00:39 recently winner of Lanarkshire Green Business of the Year.
00:42 She was meant to come last year and we had everybody here last year
00:44 but right at the last minute there was a lot of snow at Glasgow Airport
00:48 her flight couldn't land and they had to cancel all the engagements
00:51 so my mum stood in for Princess Anne in the role she was born to play
00:56 and Princess promised she would come back and see us
01:00 and then here we are today, eight months later.
01:03 It's a fantastic honour for us, we've just come from a little tiny shop
01:06 when I used to make ice cream it was just me on my own
01:08 and I've come to this factory, we've got 26 full-time staff
01:11 we're on Lanarkshire Business of the Year, we've won all sorts of awards
01:14 we supply all the major supermarkets
01:17 but to have the Royals, it's just a tremendous honour
01:19 my dad, if he'd been here today, would be very proud.
01:22 We're the McKellar family, so we were at an event for Maggie's Lanarkshire
01:26 to raise some much needed funds, we were at an auction that evening
01:30 and we bid on a prize to have a factory tour and to design some Royal ice cream.
01:36 What flavour was that?
01:38 It was salted caramel cookie dough.
01:40 You just met the Princess Royal, what did she think of it?
01:43 The Princess Royal definitely seemed to enjoy it.
01:46 Did she have a couple of goes at it?
01:48 She had a bit of a cone, yeah.
01:50 I think it was a real honour today and a fantastic opportunity to meet the Princess Royal
01:55 she was lovely and spent a lot of time chatting to us and to others
02:00 and as I say, we did this as part of raising funds for Maggie's Lanarkshire
02:06 which is a fantastic charity and one that's close to our hearts as a family.
02:12 [Music plays]
02:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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