Farming: Highland Show puts the call out for inventive entrants

Crowds at the Royal Highland Show

While the scale and design might have changed markedly over the years, the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS) which organises the Highland Show is calling for entries for its longest standing award.

The prestigious Technical Innovation Awards – known more colloquially as the New Implement Award for most of the 200-plus years since it was first introduced is awarded in recognition of design and innovation across machinery and equipment for use in the agri and rural sectors.

Chief steward for the section, Christopher Shepherd, said the award continued to showcase inventions and innovations which demonstrated a positive impact on agriculture, horticulture, equestrian, forestry, renewable energy and estate activities.

And, with the 200th show set to take place in June this year, he said that the organisers were hoping for a bumper set of entries to both show and celebrate the fact that Scotland continued to lead in the field of farm inventions.

Entries for the award must relate to machines, appliances, technical components or important ancillary equipment and should be commercially available or prototypes in development – and will be judged and benchmarked on individual merit.

As usual, the judging format will be a hybrid of in-person demonstrations, user evaluation and electronic submissions. The awards are open to entries from Thursday, 24 March until Friday, 15 April via the Royal Highland Show website (royalhighlandshow.org).

Winners will be presented with their awards during the Royal Highland Show in June when they will be viewed by 200,000 visitors and promoted through an extensive PR and digital marketing campaign, with spaces reserved at the Show for the winners from 2020, 2021 and 2022 to exhibit their winning designs.

Showing how the society has been at the cutting edge of innovation since the it was first set up in 1784, the Technical Innovation awards or ‘New Implements Award’ was the first category to be put up for an award.

Last year, one Gold, six Silver and five Certificates of Commendations were awarded. The Gold award was presented to previous Silver award winners Calibrate Inc. Ltd, for their Heatpump Heat/Chill 6MW System.

“Despite the challenges of the last couple of years, we have continued to see businesses exhibit fantastic levels of innovation, with a huge number of high-quality entries to the Technical Innovation Awards,” said Shepherd.

“The Awards are a highly influential industry accolade, offering a unique and valuable marketing advantage to winners – this year even more so, as the Royal Highland Show celebrates its 200th anniversary. I look forward to seeing the designs and products that are leading the way in developing our rural industries.”

Susie McDonald, Managing Director of 2021 Gold award winners Calibrate Inc. Ltd commented: “The entering process allowed us to take a step back and reflect on our journey from where we started in 2012 to where we are now, nine years later, and recognise the work that all our team do and the amount they put into this business.”

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