The Scottish Ocean Cluster has appointed former Associated Seafoods CEO Victor West as its new chair as the organization moves into a new phase focused on accelerating commercial opportunities from seafood by-products.
West was announced as the first member of the cluster’s board at its inaugural summit, held at the University of Strathclyde’s Sir Jim McDonald Technology and Innovation Centre in Glasgow on 9 September 2026. The cluster said the appointment marks a significant next step in its development after it has spent the past two years building engagement across Scotland’s seafood and wider bioeconomy sectors and around the potential to extract greater value from seafood processing side-streams.
Speaking at the event, West said the demand for the summit demonstrated the hard work, research, and engagement undertaken by the cluster to date.
Moving forward, to help support side-stream innovators overcome the so-called “valley of death” gap between early-stage development and becoming self-sustaining ventures, the organization will look to encourage greater collaboration across the industry, including knowledge and infrastructure sharing, West said.
In this regard, “one of the real success points” for the cluster will be establishing this “new culture” of how things are done in Scotland, West said, adding that the follow-on challenge will then be to help turn the relationships developed through the cluster into commercially viable opportunities.
“There are many good ideas, but we’ve got to make sure they’re also marketable,” he said. “As a cluster, we want to support people facing these challenges.”
Seafood Scotland CEO and leader of the Scottish Ocean Cluster Steering Group Donna Fordyce said West's industry experience will be important as the organization enters its next stage.
“Victor brings unrivalled industry knowledge and experience, and the steering group is exceptionally confident in the strength of his leadership as we progress at pace into the next phase,’ she said.
Fordyce said under West’s leadership, Associated Seafoods’ turnover grew from GBP 6 million (USD 8.1 million, EUR 7 million) to GBP 120 million (USD 162.6 million, EUR 139.7 million) in 15 years, and he comes with a “really good pedigree” for developing and supporting the executive team running the cluster, she said.
The cluster’s primary goal is to create economic wealth and innovation by valorizing the 65 species of seafood available in Scotland.
The cluster’s team now includes Project Manager Tracy White and Engagement Manager Steve Marr, and Fordyce characterized the organization’s current momentum as “amazing,” with a lot of different project ideas coming forward.
“The Scottish Ocean Cluster is the right thing to be doing in Scotland,” she said. “Developing the cluster and value creation is so important for our local fishing communities which are seeing quotas being cut. We need to find ways to maintain that economic value for those communities and ensure there’s a future for the next generation wanting to come into the fishing and processing sectors.”
Fordyce also emphasized the need to pursue demand-led commercial opportunities.
“We didn’t create the cluster because we thought it would be a novel thing to do. It’s got to be about action, about results. We need to deliver and really prove our worth for the industry,” she said.
