Marine Harvest cuts 80 jobs in tough week for salmon
The world’s largest fish farmer Marine Harvest has confirmed that it will be cutting 80 jobs from its 658-strong workforce at Marine Harvest Scotland.
The Norwegian company announced it was restructuring in Scotland in January. It issued a 30-day notice and entered a formal period of consultation with staff representatives about which posts would be affected across more than 50 sites in Scotland.
Posts will go in fish farms and offices with 44 going at its operations across sites in Lochaber, 12 in Mallaig, 11 in Skye and Lochalsh, four in Wester Ross and three in Lewis. Two jobs are also to be cut in Argyll, two in South Uist and two in Rosyth.
‘Sorry to be losing’
Ben Hadfield, md of Marine Harvest Scotland and global feed director, said: “We are sorry to be losing some highly qualified and skilled people. But we have to restructure the business to make it more efficient and sustainable.
“By taking this action now we can be more certain of maintaining jobs in the future.”
Plans to create a £20M feed plant in Scotland continue as part of the restructuring of the business. An announcement on a preferred site is likely within the next month.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Salmon Company posted a pre-tax loss for the year ended December 31, 2015, of £405,000 compared with a profit of £13.7M in the previous year. Turnover was also down from £126M to £100.4M.
Storms and unplanned boat maintenance
In its fourth quarter report, the company said it had faced challenging conditions with storms and unplanned boat maintenance. That had meant 16 days of harvesting were lost and fish had died, which had also affected the firm’s results.
It said published industry prices for salmon, which are in Norwegian Krone, had reached record highs, but the weakness of the Krone against sterling had diluted the price achieved.
However, it noted that Scottish salmon remained Scotland’s largest food export, despite the strength of sterling, and the company was continuing to develop new farms which would increase volumes in the future.
Scottish Salmon Company md Craig Anderson said: “When reflecting back on 2015, it is important to see how we have handled a series of challenging circumstances during the year.
“I firmly believe our results are testament to the fact we have put strong foundations in place over the past few years that have enabled us to demonstrate the stability of the business.
“Moving on to 2016 we have a strong base on which to deliver our forecast of 30,000t.”
