Young’s Seafood Ltd. has held its third formal consultation meeting with staff and their representatives – the Joint Consultative Group – to explore proposals and possible options for its facilities at Fraserburgh and Spey Valley.
The consultation process follows the U.K. seafood company’s announcement earlier this month that it was considering closing the two processing sites after losing contracts for fresh and smoked salmon with retailer Sainsbury’s to Marine Harvest.
The loss of these contracts will leave Young’s Seafood Limited’s factories at Fraserburgh and Marsden Road in Grimsby significantly underutilized and will leave the Spey Valley factory with no work whatsoever.
On announcing the potential closures, Young’s said it would consult on a commercially viable proposal to integrate the servicing of the remaining customer contracts and volumes presently processed at Young’s Fraserburgh and Spey Valley into its other manufacturing sites in Grimsby, Livingston and Annan.
The company continues to consider alternatives as part of the consultation process, it said in a new statement. One of the alternatives, discussed with the Joint Consultative Group and the Joint Stakeholder Group in the latest meeting, is a potential plan that could keep the Fraserburgh site open on a reduced basis with up to 250 permanent roles retained.
This option focuses on maintaining ready-to-eat smoking provenance and capacity at the facility and would be loss-making in the short term, until further contracts could be won and scale could be reintroduced. To date, no tangible financial assistance has been committed by any external agency.
“We are working hard with our employees and stakeholders to see if this new alternative option could be made into a reality, as part of the consultation process,” said the statement.
The consultation for Young’s Fraserburgh is expected to continue at least until the end of August.
The same minimum timescale has been put on the Spey Valley site, but because it is 100 percent engaged in the lost contract, any volumes that Young’s moves into the facility would be at the expense of the Fraserburgh site.
Young’s lease on Spey Valley expires on 31 December 2015.
“No final decision will be taken on the future of the sites until the conclusion of the formal collective consultation process. We continue to welcome new ideas and proposals and encourage interested parties to put them forward for consideration as part of the consultation process,” said the statement.
Sainsbury’s contract with Marine Harvest takes effect in November.
