Lady Haig's Poppy Factory

The charity’s adaptability during the pandemic was perhaps best illustrated by the disabled veterans of Lady Haig’s Poppy Factory.

Forced to adopt homeworking during the lockdown, they worked tirelessly to safeguard the 2020 Scottish Poppy Appeal by producing more than one million poppies during this time.

The Factory was able to reopen on a limited basis in July, allowing for wreath production and dispatch to be ramped up ahead of the remembrance period.  As if the impact of the pandemic was not enough to contend with, torrential rain in August saw the Factory’s temporary home at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh submerged in a flash flood, destroying hundreds of thousands of poppies in the process. A week later our permanent home at Warriston Road, which is undergoing a building compliance refurbishment programme, was broken into. As the site was unoccupied nothing was stolen and, thankfully, the area which sustained some malicious damage had not been refurbished.