Irn man steeled for change

However, this is the legendary Robin Barr, the keeper of Irn-Bru's secret recipe, and not unlike his best-selling product he also might be "made from girders".

For more than 50 years with the family business, Barr has gathered a reputation for speaking his mind, shunning so-called political correctness, not suffering fools gladly, and for his generally truculent behaviour.

So why should he give in to sentimentality?

Barr rarely gives interviews, but there is a sense this time that, in spite of his unemotional farewell to Parkhead, he too feels this to be the end of an era.

After all, not long after the company first moved there in 1886, Celtic decided to relocate its pitch a few hundred yards away and build the club's first stands, and Barr's great-grandfather, Robert Fulton Barr, bought part of the old ground.

Barr, who appears to have somewhat devilish sense of humour, said: "After we first moved here, we expanded right on the pitch of the first Celtic Park. We still have the original goalpost.

"We can honestly say that a corner of the original Paradise is right here at AG Barr."

When The Herald caught up with him, he was in the final stages of clearing out his office in preparation for the big move this Friday to a huge purpose-built site in Cumbernauld.

The dark rectangular outlines are all that now suggest the portraits of previous Barr rulers once graced the old boardroom walls.

A glass cabinet, yet to be emptied, holds a plethora of company curios. These include the hoof of Carnera, the tallest working horse in the world, which in the 1930s delivered Scotland's "other national drink" to retailers, a packet of Irn-Bru flavoured sweeties from the 1970s, and a bottle of whisky mixed with Irn-Bru, possibly the world's first alcopop.

In Barr's own office, boxes of historic Irn-Bru bottles - to be put on display at the new Cumbernauld headquarters - are piled high, and old newspaper clippings charting the company's extraordinary history sit side-by-side with recently unearthed pieces of AG Barr's past.

Nonetheless, Barr remains unmoved. He is a self-confessed pragmatist who began work aged 16 at the company founded as a cork-cutting operation in Falkirk by his ancestor, Robert Barr, in 1830.

While rummaging through a pile of old papers, he discovered the original, 82-year-old recipe for Tizer - but instead of becoming sentimental, Barr spotted a business opportunity, and the company plans to relaunch the sweet, red thirst-quencher later this year.

"I don't have as much nostalgia for this place as I perhaps ought to have," admitted Barr, who relaxed what was widely regarded as his "irn" grip on the company in 2004, when he relinquished his role as chief executive and brought in Roger White, the company's first non-family member to take the helm. He doesn't appear to have been emotional about that either.

"Although it's true this company has been here in Parkhead for 120 years, the fact of the matter is that we began in Falkirk, and that's where I first began with the company.

"And, of course, we stopped production at Parkhead and at other units in 1996 to centralise the process.

"I can tell you I felt a much greater emotional tug when we closed the Falkirk depot."

He added: "It's interesting to note from the old papers that AG Barr first moved to Parkhead in 1886 because the site had enough space to expand. There was almost nothing out here in those days.

"In fact, that's precisely why we're moving to Cumbernauld - because after 120 years there is no where left to expand."

AG Barr is, of course, much more than just a company.

The maker of "Scotland's other national drink" - along with a raft of other soft drinks - is nothing less than an institution, famed as a hangover cure and part of Scotland's national identity. Successive generations have memories of its distinctive, quirky advertising campaigns.

As the sixth-generation family member to run the business, Barr was steeped in its ups and downs from an early age.

Barr's earliest recollections of his childhood are of being with the delivery horses at the Falkirk plant, which was near the Barr family home.

"The logistics of this business were based on the fact that all deliveries were by horse-drawn lorry, which restricted territories to 10 miles out and 10 miles back. That explains why at one time we had so many depots.

"When I was 14, in 1952, I went on the last horse-drawn delivery, which went from Falkirk to Camelon. It just wasn't practical anymore.

"But the main reason why motorised vehicles took over was nothing to do with economy - it was still cheaper to use horses for distances up to three miles - but by the early 1950s it had become difficult to find skilled horsemen.

"We still kept the horses until 1959, mainly because my grandfather liked them. But after he died, my father got rid of them.

"My father was a very pragmatic businessman. He was a hard taskmaster and he liked things done properly.

"When I was younger, it seemed as though I was always in the plant, running between our home and the depot to see my father or pass on a message, and the conversation at the dinner table was also the business."

Barr's first job in the family business came during the long, hot summer of 1954, and the company was working all out to keep up with demand. He recalled: "I was press-ganged to work with the syrup room girls for that summer, and was my first real employment there.

"Thinking back now, I don't know why they were called syrup girls, because they were really quite elderly."

After graduating with a degree in accountancy, Barr joined the company full-time in 1960 and became its chairman in 1978.

Over the years, he has continued to irritate armies of City analysts and corporate governance enforcers, often with lashings of his own particular brand of humour.

At the company's 2005 annual meeting, attended by The Herald, one long-standing shareholder wondered why AG Barr had never appointed a female board member.

"Is there not an appropriate lady somewhere?" the shareholder asked - to which Barr quipped: "When we find an appropriate lady, we'll put her on the board."

However, he is at the same time applauded and respected by the shareholders for his business prowess. That is hardly surprising, because AG Barr's stock market worth has tripled in four years to more than £240m, and the company continues to corner the Scottish soft drinks market and make impressive inroads into England, Russia, Australia and North America. Its former advertising slogan "Made in Scotland from girders" could easily now read "Made in Scotland and Russia", where it reportedly has famed powers as an aphrodisiac.

Advertising and myth have long played a part of AG Barr's success story, even going back to the non-PC 1930s' promotional cartoon about Ba-Brew, the little Indian boy.

Then, of course there is the business of the secret ingredient - myth or reality, fact or fiction?

The fact of the matter is that even with today's regulatory insistence on ingredient labelling, no-one knows what exactly Irn-Bru is made from - except Barr himself and one other, unnamed individual.

When asked by The Herald to reveal the secret recipe, Barr rolled his eyes, smiled and said: "I'm afraid not.

"I started work at this company more than 50 years ago, and the secret recipe was handed down to me by my father. I was initiated in 1960, when I properly joined the company. And my father was given it by his father before him.

"I go along and mix the flavouring about once every four weeks or so. There is one other person who knows the secret formula, but his identity is never revealed for security reasons. We never travel in the same plane either," he added.

Asked how he felt about bringing in the first non-family member to run the company, he said: "Most family businesses fail for the simple reason that there isn't necessarily the talent there to run a business from generation to generation.

"I suppose one reason for the long-term success of Barr's is that the family has always been blessed with individuals with sufficient ambition and ability to keep growing the business.

"But that's never something that is guaranteed to continue."

What of his continuation? Are there plans to retire?

"I'm in semi-retirement now. The only reason I'm in here so much these days is because the weather has been so awful and I can't get out to play much golf."

And what about the secret recipe? Who will be the new keeper when he finally leaves?

Barr added: "The promise is that the secret must remain with at least one member of the Barr family, and after my time, the secret will pass to my daughter, who works in the marketing department here.

"Should anything happen to me and the other keeper in the meantime, the secret is secure in a bank safety deposit box. But if you were to ask me when I'm leaving the company, the straight answer is I just don't know."