Marks & Spencer (M&S) scooped the Seafood Retailer of the Year award at the Retail Industry Awards 2015 ceremony held in London on 24 September.
Aldi was Highly Commended in the category.
The annual awards reward excellence and outstanding achievements across a variety of different grocery categories in the United Kingdom. The 2015 edition marked the 20th anniversary of the awards.
The seafood retailer category was open to grocers with more than 10 stores, selling fresh and frozen, prepared and unprepared seafood. They were judged on several criteria, including the processes and procedures they have in place to ensure the seafood they offer for sale is from sustainable, well-managed stocks, as well as specific training undertaken to equip staff with knowledge about where/how products are sourced, allowing them to talk knowledgeably to customers about responsible sourcing issues, etc.
At the recent World Seafood Congress (WSC) 2015 in Grimsby, Hannah MacIntyre, fish and aquaculture manager at M&S, told delegates that while the retailer has a modest 4 percent market share of U.K. food retail, it has a 14 percent share of total seafood sales.
