Gordon Baxter receives his CBE from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace in 2010.
A Moray businessman who transformed his parents’ small firm into a multi-million-pound international food empire has died.
Gordon Baxter CBE was 95.
He was described as an “amazing and inspirational man” who was committed to his home town of Fochabers and the Moray area.
The life president of Baxters of Fochabers worked alongside his brother Ian and wife Ena in the post-war years to build on the modest food business his parents had set up. He passed control of the company to the couple’s daughter Audrey in 1992.
The firm, famous for its soups and preserves, commands £130 million in sales annually and employs more than 1,000 people.
Mr Baxter also donated thousands of pounds to good causes many of which were in his native North-East through his work with the Baxters Foundation.
The lifelong cricket fan, who was also patron of Cricket Scotland, was made an OBE in 1968 for services to British exports and was a former Grampian Industrialist of the Year.
He became only the third person to be awarded the Freedom of Moray in 2008, and was appointed as an honorary fellow of the University of the Highlands and Islands that same year.
