Fit for a Queen
I
McNab Sports was established in 1985 by Duncan and Maggie McNab. The company is proud that it is one of the few companies within the industry that has been awarded a Royal Warrant by Her Majesty the Queen, for the maintenance work on the golf course at Balmoral Castle.
Here, Duncan talks about some of the contracts the company maintain and the difficulties
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had previously worked as a Technical Representative for Fisons Amenity, representing the company in Scotland, and was also Sales Manager for an Edinburgh based sportsturf contracting company. Maggie was working in the PR Department for BP Oil in Edinburgh at that time. We made the joint decision to start our own company back in 1985. I went out on the road and Maggie looked after the office side of the business. We decided to expand the areas of sport which included the sales of amenity products, sports equipment and specialised sports clothing, which the company still supplies to the present day, to local authorities and sports clubs. The main areas of the business today have centred on sports turf maintenance and construction, and drainage of sports facilities.
Over the years, the company has grown and now employs seventeen staff, with the majority working within the Perth & Kinross county area. In 2003, we entered into a partnership
agreement to maintain the fine and outfield turf sports facilities for Perth & Kinross Council. The total area of 7000km2
makes Perth & Kinross the fifth
associated with H&S, staff recruitment, training and tendering
largest land mass in Scotland and, within this area, we maintain over two hundred pitches, which include football, rugby, hockey and shinty, as well as school athletics, artificial surfaces, six bowling greens and an eighteen hole golf course. The North Inch Golf Course lies beside the banks of the River Tay, as it flows through the city of Perth. It is reputed to be one of the oldest courses in Scotland and was played by King James IV of Scotland (1473-1513). Although it is picturesque on a
summer’s day, the river can cause serious problems to the course. In 1993, the course was completely flooded when the river burst its banks - the course was re- designed then to become a flood plain as the first line of defence for the town. A stream now runs through the new back nine and backs up when the river rises, reducing the course to just nine playable holes. The latest major flood was in 2009, which washed away ten bunkers and one complete tee.
Operations
The company has recently started an artificial pitch cleaning and maintenance service, with the purchase of a Hörger SKU 1500 cleaning machine, which has proved to be a great investment. Part of our council contract is to maintain five artificial surfaces, and we have found out, over the years, that brushing alone was not sufficient on the 2G surfaces, so we decided to purchase specialised equipment for maintenance. We are now carrying out this work the length and breadth of Scotland to local authorities, schools, colleges and prisons. The company has just completed a
reconstruction and drainage project for Carlisle Council, and is currently working on a football pitch construction project outside Selkirk in the Scottish Borders. Forest Pitch is a community arts project, funded as part of the twelve projects being created across Britain for the 2012 Cultural Olympics.
It is a completely unique situation. Initially, 2,000 trees had to be felled and the stumps removed. The trees were kept on site as they will be used to build a clubhouse/shelter, but the 290 tonnes of stumps were taken away to a recycling centre. Currently, we are at the formation
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