Young’s Seafood Ltd has held its third formal consultation meeting with staff at its Fraserburgh and Spey Valley facilities, following the announcement of the company’s intention to close them earlier this month.
The firm lost its contract for fresh and smoked salmon with Sainsbury’s back in June to Marine Harvest.
It said at the time that this would leave the Fraserburgh facility and Marsden Road in Grimsby significantly under-utilised and leave the Spey Valley factory completely empty with no work.
But in a new statement, Young’s has now said that the company is continuing to “consider alternatives” for Fraserburgh as part of the consultation process.
One option on the table already discussed with the Joint Consultative Group and Joint Stakeholder Group is a potential plan to keep the site open on a reduced basis with up to 250 staff retained.
This option focuses mainly on maintaining the ready-to-eat smoking capacity at the facility with the aim of winning new contracts in the future. But it is not clear how this would be achieved because the facility will be loss making in the short term.
Because Spey Valley is 100% engaged in producing for the lost contract its volume disappears in November so it will definitely close. Its lease expires on 31 December 2015 and the company is currently seeking a buyer for the site.
The consultation process for Fraserburgh will apparently continue until the end of August with Marine Harvest taking set to take on the Sainsbury’s contract in November.
