Corporate recovery expert, GVA, has announced that the UK’s William Wright Dock fish auctioning facility in Hull has been acquired by local food producer, Cranswick Foods plc.
Cranswick has acquired the facility off the back of a £30m contract with supermarket giant, Asda, to become the store’s main pork supplier in order to meet a surge in demand.
The company will be delivering around 100 new jobs and will be investing millions of pounds in slicing, dicing and vacuum packing technology at the site.
The site will be renamed Cranswick Riverside and will be in full production by the end of March 2013.
Chris Aldersley, managing director of fresh pork at Cranswick, said: “The building was an ideal facility for us to convert to retail packing due to having originally being built to a very high standard as a food processing facility.”
Alex Sweetman, associate in GVA’s Corporate Recovery team, added: “We are delighted to secure such a promising future for such a prominent property. The appeal of the site was very clear to Cranswick and it will meet its growing needs following the Asda contract win.”
The dockside industrial unit in Neptune Street, was built in 2000 but closed in 2011 when the site went into receivership. Its decline marked the end of a 150 year tradition of daily fish auctions in the city.
