Hans J Marter

2 February, 2009

UNSECURED creditors of the collapsed cod farming business No Catch can expect to receive just one per cent of the money owed to them, it has emerged.

Administrators Grant Thornton said in a letter received by creditors at the end of last week that there would be just £224,000 available to unsecured creditors.

They also revealed that the cost of the administration had reached almost £700,000, charged at an average rate of £248 per hour.

The trail blazing, organic cod farming venture, based in Shetland, went under with debts of around £40 million, on 19 February last year, when bankers Kaupthing, Singer and Friedlander cancelled the company's loans and overdrafts.

Since then, the UK subsidiary of what used to be Iceland's largest bank has gone into administration itself.

Joint administrator Rob Caven said he was unable to conclude the No Catch administration due to the bank's own administration process.

Around 130 jobs were lost in the company’s collapse, although most people affected have found new employment with the firms that have bought assets from No Catch.

These include sites, cages and feed barges sold to Scottish Sea Farms and Hjaltland Seafarms, the mussel farming operation acquired by local firm Blueshell Marine, and the organic sea trout farming business bought by new company QA Fish, run by former No Catch employees Gordon Johnson and Robert Williamson.

In his letter to creditors, Mr Caven said: "Based on current outcome estimates I expect the net property realised under the floating charge will result in a prescribed part (the amount available to unsecured creditors) of the order of £224,000 (resulting in a return of circa 1.11p in the £ before costs of distribution)."

He added: "There will be no return to the unsecured creditors other than the prescribed part."

Mr Caven also reported that No Catch had now ceased trading and that all the assets, apart from the former processing factory at Blydoit, in Scalloway, have been sold.

He said: "We are currently negotiating a sale of this factory which we expect to complete in the next four to eight weeks."

Shetland Abattoir Co-operative Limited (SACL) is keen to buy the building from the administrators and has applied to Shetland Islands Council for financial assistance.

They plan to convert the factory into a skaughterhouse and meat processing plant, a proposal that is fiercely opposed by neighbours who handed a petition with 80 signatures in to the local authority.