Seafish launches Seafood Training Academy

The full list of partners is:

* Billingsgate Seafood Training School, London

* Seafood Northwest Training Centre, Fleetwood

* Seafood Training Centre, North Shields

* The National Federation of Fish Friers Training School, Leeds

* The Sea Fish Industry Authority (Seafish)

Collectively the Seafood Training Academy will deliver a comprehensive suite of training programmes to the onshore seafood industry, including processing, retailing and foodservice. The initial courses offered will cover food safety, health and safety, fishmongering and frying skills. In the coming months this list of programmes will expand significantly to cover other areas.

Over the next few months the Academy will appoint employers to sit on the Academy Management Committee alongside members from each Academy Partner to direct the work of the Academy partnership.

Seafood industry employers can also influence the work of the Academy, as there is a process in place for them to pass on comments and suggestions to the individual academy partners via the website.

The facilities available from individual partners are comprehensive. The National Federation of Fish Friers has a substantial suite of training rooms at their Training School in Leeds, which include modern, high efficiency frying ranges, food preparation rooms and classroom facilities.

Both Billingsgate and North Shields Seafood Schools have extensive training, preparation and working areas providing an excellent learning environment for students undertaking any of the programmes available.

The North West Seafood School also has plans to further develop their training facilities to match those of the other partners.

John Rutherford, Chief Executive of Seafish said: “Becoming part of the National Skills Academy will provide a great opportunity for this venture to make its training programmes more widely available within the food industry as a whole. We are committed to providing new opportunities for learning for the seafood industry, either as cost effective training from the Seafood Training Academy Partnership or as free content from the dedicated website.”

The Seafood Training Academy will also promote the services of other training providers who can deliver appropriate training programmes to seafood employers. The benefits of training and development will be promoted through the use of case studies and through the website, which already contains a substantial amount of free content for students, employers and decision makers in the industry.

The Seafood Training Academy will also promote the seafood industry as a career of choice though the distribution of free careers packs to interested parties and through downloadable videos from the website.