“Coming home made me think about how, growing up in an industrial town, the big businesses were Stoddart’s Carpets, Andrew Barclay Motors, Massey Ferguson tractors, Johnnie Walker whisky,” she said.
“And in the 70s and the 80s we saw complete decline, not just in Kilmarnock, but a lot of industrial towns.”
According to the 2020 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), hundreds of homes in Kilmarnock have some of the highest poverty levels in the country.
Ms Macklin took over the business when her father retired and her first deal brought the first Morrisons supermarket to Scotland. It opened in Kilmarnock in 2004.
“I knew if I could get class one food retail consent, that would give me the money to roll-out and reinvest in all the old buildings,” she said.
“Because they’re very difficult to develop and you don’t get grants.”
But in 2009, Kilmarnock’s last big employer Diageo decided to close the Johnnie Walker bottling plant to cut costs.
