Young’s Seafood Limited will be discontinuing its fresh and smoked salmon processing contracts with U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury’s in an effort to preserve the grocer’s Scottish salmon sourcing credentials.
Following a tendering process with Young’s, Sainsbury’s opted to hand over its salmon contracts to Norwegian seafood company Marine Harvest, which will process Scottish farmed salmon from its new Rosyth, Scotland processing facility; before its new operation was built, Marine Harvest had been providing its fish to Young’s Grimsby processing location.
According to Pete Ward, CEO of Young’s Seafood Limited, the transfer of the salmon contracts from Young’s to Marine Harvest will be completed by November this year.
Even though Sainsbury’s will remain one of Young’s most prized clients and has vowed to continue working with the seafood company in other product realms, including those already established for cod and haddock, many workers and unions are concerned with what the contract cut will mean for the Young’s Marsden Road site.
The Marsden Road location in Grimsby employs approximately 300 permanent workers and 200 agency staff. Union officials from Unite fear that the loss of the Sainsbury’s contracts could come at a further cost of roughly 330 jobs.
Young’s plans on discussing what the nulling of the contracts means for its Grimsby and Fraserburgh processing sites in the days and months to come.
“We will be engaging with our employees and other stakeholders to discuss the implications for our business and how we can best position our company to achieve long term, sustainable growth in the current competitive market place. As we move forward, exploring a number of new business opportunities, our focus continues to be on serving our customers and consumers and on our commitment to providing high quality, good value, fish and seafood,” said Ward in an official company statement.
“The company is looking to obtain new contracts to fill the void left by the loss of the contract to prepare, smoke, freeze and deliver salmon to Sainsbury’s,” added Unite representative Dave Monaghan.
Unite, which has members who work at the jeopardized Grimsby processing location, will be working with Young’s Seafood management to mitigate any potential job losses, noted Monaghan. Furthermore, Unite intends to ask "Sainbury’s if Marine Harvest has the ability to provide the processed salmon directly to Sainsbury’s” – “Young’s Seafood’s facilities in Grimsby are first class and top of the range,” Monaghan explained.
Three plants owned by Young’s are located in Grimsby, employing as many as 2,000 people. Last year, the Marsden Road location lost whitefish production as a result of Young’s allocating such processes to its Fraserburgh site.
