Carr’s Flour Mills has registered an exclusive tartan for trade body Scottish Bakers  to celebrate its 125th anniversary.

Created as a special gift to mark the milestone, the unique tartan design reflects the purple, green and yellow hues featured in the Scottish Bakers logo.

Carr’s Flour Mills sales director Allan Burns commented: “We decided to present a gift to Scottish Bakers and our customer base as a thank you for their loyalty and support. We started off with a Carr’s tartan and then introduced the colours from Scottish Bakers’ logo and ended up with an absolutely fantastic tartan that all bakers should be very proud to wear."

Scottish Bakers chief executive Alan Clarke wore a kilt made of the tartan at a Gala celebration night held in Edinburgh earlier this month.

He said: “Our 125th year is a milestone that we will never forget and having our own stunning tartan is the icing on the cake. As a trade association that works hard to support our sector, to receive such a gift in recognition of our achievements is a real honour.”

With its motto ‘for the good of all’, Scottish Bakers promotes the interests of the bakery trade with its 20,000 employees in Scotland.

Carr’s Flour Mills has just been sold to Whitworths in a £36m deal.

All about tartan

The English word ‘tartan’ is most likely derived from the French tartarin meaning Tartar cloth. It has also been suggested that "tartan" may be derived from modern Scottish Gaelic tarsainn, meaning ‘across’. Today "tartan" usually refers to coloured patterns, though originally a tartan did not have to be made up of any pattern at all. As late as the 1830s, tartan was sometimes described as ‘plain coloured ... without pattern’.

It has been estimated that there are about 3,500 to 7,000 different tartans, with around 150 new designs being created every year.

The Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) is Scotland’s official tartan register. The SRT is maintained and administrated by the National Archives of Scotland. The aim of the Register is to provide a definitive and accessible resource to promote and preserve tartans.