Update from the processing sector

Seafood industry skills initiative launches

Seafood businesses in Scotland will be offered a new set of training packages as part of a Business Improvement Programme launched by Seafood Scotland

Above: Business improvement programme SEAFOOD SCOTLAND has been awarded £100,000 of funding from the National Transition Training Fund and Skills Development Scotland to support onshore activities of seafood businesses across the country, upskilling and training employees to support company growth. The programme will provide bespoke training packages to companies to help support their objectives. Free webinars and funded courses will be available to meet business and team needs and strategic goals. Companies will have access to over 60 courses covering four key training areas: • upskilling and multiskilling staff – training for employees and teams; • career recruitment and retention toolkits for businesses – helping them to develop recruitment and retention policies; • process automation and business implications; and • women in Seafood in Scotland.

The programme will be delivered to current staff members over the age of 25 using flexible and hybrid methods, such as self-taught online modules and guided virtual sessions. Courses range from fish frying, knife skills and monger training to customer and human resource services, as well as guidance on business planning and strategy.

Donna Fordyce, Chief Executive at Seafood Scotland, said: “It’s important that the businesses in our onshore seafood

“We will help companies plan their training opportunities”

sector continue to grow and this funding can help them do just that. With the support received from the National Transition Training Fund and Skills Development Scotland, we will help companies plan their training opportunities and the courses available to them in line with their business objectives.

“The window for this funding is open until March and I would strongly encourage any onshore seafood businesses to take this great opportunity to upskill and train staff without the burden of additional costs.”

The National Transition Training Fund was launched in 2020 by Skills Development Scotland following the rise in unemployment due to the Covid pandemic.

The scheme aims to give individuals the opportunity to gain industry-recognised qualifications to help find employment.

Want not, waste not for Seafood Village

The UK’s largest fish-processing complex has recently set an impressive new recycling record. In the past year it has successfully disposed of 240,000 polystyrene boxes – enough to fill more than 100 40-foot long vehicle trailers – plus 6.2 tonnes of cardboard and 3,500 wooden pallets.

The Seafood Village is a large business park focused on processing. It is home to 21 different seafood companies working on fish of all types, farmed and wild caught.

Seafood Village Joint Managing Director Peter Dalton said: “Gary Cadey [also Co-Managing Director] and I are very proud with what we have achieved.

“If you put all the polystyrene boxes end to end they would stretch for 17 miles – and that is a lot of polystyrene needing to be recycled. They are ground down and made into new boxes again. And the same goes for the wooden pallets.”

The Seafood Village team worked closely with Adrian Rowlands from the recycling company Enviro Grimsby.

Dalton said: “They were very helpful and guided us through what we should do. We set up a compound in the middle of the village with a special section where users could put their waste, and the response was great.”

He said fish, by its nature, created a lot of packaging waste, which is why it was important to establish a proper scheme.

Grimsby Seafood Village is the brainchild of Dalton and Cadey, who changed the face of seafood processing in Grimsby by bringing companies together and sharing common facilities rather than have them scattered over the fish docks.

The park opened in 2012 and is now full, home to more than 20 firms processing everything from cod to salmon.

“We are getting an increasing amount of salmon from Norway and Scotland these days,” Dalton said.

“Fortunately, we have managed to weather the pandemic quite well and the firms down here had very few people on furlough.”

He said fish remained popular with the public, but had become quite expensive in recent weeks.

Bakkafrost takes majority stake in Danish cannery

BAKKAFROST has acquired a controlling stake in Danish canned salmon and general fish company Munkebo Seafood AS.

The Faroese fish farming group, which has major interests in Scotland, said it had acquired 90% of the shares in Munkebo from Paul Lybech, who has been involved with the business for the past 25 years.

The remaining 10% is held by General Manager Michael Karlsen, who will continue in that post.

Bakkafrost has not disclosed how much it is paying for the business. Munkebo, which employs around 40 people, had an operational EBIT of DKK 4.8m (£550,000) in 2020. Its products are mainly sold in grocery stores in the European Union.

Munkebo Seafood AS was founded in 1974 and has, since its formation, been engaged in production of canned fish at the factory in the Danish city of Munkebo. Today the company operates a modern canning facility and offers a wide range of products, of which the largest share is based on salmon.

Bakkafrost CEO Regin Jacobsen said his company had been one of the largest suppliers of raw materials for Munkebo Seafood for the past few years, making it “a great extension of Bakkafrost’s value chain”.

He added: “With a planned increase in production of salmon over the coming years, from Bakkafrost’s farms in the Faroe Islands and in Scotland, Munkebo Seafood will have a strengthened raw material base and Bakkafrost will strengthen the ability to further increase the value derived from its salmon byproducts.

“With the acquisition of Munkebo Seafood, Bakkafrost can now offer a wider range of products. Bakkafrost offers fresh, frozen and smoked salmon products, and now canned food is added”.

Bakkafrost said that its global sales network meant Munkebo Seafood’s products will now be offered to a wider market as a supplement to Bakkafrost’s other consumer-packaged products.

Hilton snaps up Dutch salmon specialist Foppen

The hilton UK meat and seafood group has acquired the Dutch Seafood Company that trades under the Foppen salmon brand in a deal worth around €90m. (£76m).

Based in Huntingdon, Hilton Food already owns Grimsby-based Seachill (formerly Icelandic Seachill), which supplies salmon and other seafood to various retailers including Tesco.

With annual sales of around €139m (£118m), Foppen is a hot and cold smoked salmon specialist supplier with a history stretching back to the First World War, when it produced smoked eel.

It has two smoked salmon operations employing almost 500 people, one in the Netherlands and the other in Greece.

The deal gives hilton an important foothold in the Netherlands and in the United States, where Foppen supplies grocery chain Costco. hilton is raising money from shareholders to pay for the acquisition through a £75m equity placing.

Hilton CEO Philip Heffer said: “The acquisition of Foppen is an exceptional opportunity for hilton and another step towards our goal of becoming the global protein partner of choice.

“More and more consumers around the world are seeking affordable, high-quality, and sustainable protein, and this acquisition will help Hilton take our offer into new markets and to new global customers for the first time.

He added: “Foppen’s premium product portfolio and strong customer relationships are a great fit for Hilton’s model, while Hilton’s strong environmental social and governance credentials in seafood will make sure our future growth plans are sustainable in every sense of the word.

“We welcome Foppen’s management and employees and look forward to delivering profitable growth through the combination of hilton and Foppen.”

Above: Foppen salmon

Mowi UK chooses Maritech Eye quality scanner

MOWI Consumer Products in the UK has teamed up with software technology company Maritech to help enhance the quality of its smoked salmon products.

Using a device known as the Maritech “Eye”, the system was specially developed to scan defects at speed.

The development work included Maritech, Mowi UK and the Norwegian research organisation Nofima.

Maritech said its solution used “advanced algorithms and hyperspectral camera technology from HySpex/ NeO to detect and document spots in the fillets, including size and location.”

The company said the eye is the only product of its kind in the world, and it operates at industrial speed. Live data is sent to both operators and management.”

Gary Paterson, Head of Operations at Mowi Consumer Products UK, said: “For our business here in the UK and in particular the Mowi brand, this gives us the ability to pre-select fillets based on a specification to reduce the manual intervention of removing blemishes once the fillets have been sliced.

“Furthermore, sorting by quality and providing objective information gives us the ability to allocate the material accordingly and allows us to utilise our resources more efficiently and effectively.”

Per Alfred Holte, Vice-President of Technical Solutions at Maritech, said: “Mowi is one of the most innovative seafood companies in the global seafood industry, and we are proud that it chose Maritech Eye.”

He added: “Mowi Consumer Products UK is currently one of three international Maritech Eye redfish projects, and we are impressed by how the Mowi team has handled the development and implementation in a period when it still has been difficult to travel due to Covid-19.

“Our team has only been at the site in Scotland once this year since the initial physical installation of the equipment.”