Hans J Marter

14 March, 2008

MORE WORKERS have been laid off at Shetland cod farming business No Catch, which went into administration at the end of last month.

Administrators Grant Thornton confirmed yesterday (Thursday) that 14 workers at the No Catch processing plant, in Scalloway, had lost their jobs on Wednesday bringing the total number of redundancies to 28.

The cod farming pioneers ran out of cash on 20 February with debts amounting to almost £41 million.

No Catch set out to revolutionise the aquaculture industry and produce 30,000 tonnes of organic cod by 2012 with the help of finance from venture capitalists Milestone Capital Partners Limited and Icelandic bank Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander.

Yesterday a spokesman for the joint administrators emphasised that the "business was still trading" but "reluctantly" they had to restructure the work at the processing plant and lay off further staff.

Due to the amount of cod in the cages reaching maturity and needing to be harvested, the Scalloway plant has stopped filleting the fish.

Cod is now just being “de-headed” and then sold on a "wholesale basis to a series of different parties".

Scalloway councillor Iris Hawkins said she was disappointed to hear of the job losses which would affect village life.

The move follows 14 redundancies made last week which mainly affected office staff.

The world's first organic cod farm had around 130 employees and operated offices in at least six locations when it had to call in the administrators.

Grant Thornton yesterday continued to be confident it could sell the business as a going concern. It is known locally that some of the big players in the world of aquaculture are interested in the whole or parts of the company.