HUNDREDS of jobs have been lost as one of Scotland’s largest seafood producers falls into administration after financial issues at their Uddingston site.
Administrators closed the facility with immediate effect at the cost of 200 jobs with 77 employees being kept on to assist with the winding-up process.
Dawnfresh operates seven fish farms across Scotland and Northern Ireland with two Scottish processing plants, including the Uddingston site and one in Arbroath.
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As one of the UK’s largest producers of fish and seafood, it processes 10,000 tonnes a year across 350 product lines.
However, Callum Carmichael, partner at administrators FRP Advisory, said the business “has been unable to overcome very serious financial problems at the Uddingston facility”.
Administrators said that in recent years the firm had started a programme of extensive investment to upgrade its plant and systems while also trying to reduce costs.
But the business continued to suffer from rising costs, overcapacity at the Uddingston site and cash flow problems.
However, all 249 jobs at the Arbroath facility will be safe, according to the administrators, after the site was sold to Lossie Seafoods Limited, as a subsidiary of Associated Seafoods Limited.
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Carmichael said administrators were “pleased to have secured a prompt sale of the Arbroath facility in a deal that will also preserve substantial employment in the town”.
In September last year, the company announced it would spend £5 million expanding the Arbroath site and that it would shut the Uddingston plant by the end of this year amid plans to move to one production facility.
Its subsidiary business Dawnfresh Farming Ltd continues to trade insolvently and is being marketed for sale.
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