Fish Processor of the Year
This award recognises the UK or Irish fish processor that has shown outstanding support for the commercial fishing industry in 2019. In particular, we are looking for evidence of the use of industry best practice, technological innovation, and excellence of service.
Shortlist
AGD Duff & Partners, Aberdeen
Established for over 40 years, AGD Duff & Partners are a wholesale fish merchants, supplying to a range of customers including supermarket chains, hotels, restaurants and shops across Europe. Now run by Paul and Alex Duff, the company was started by their father and is a family business. It is a wholesale company, but now also has a shop where its sell fish directly to customers, and a fish and chip shop too.
Fish is bought by five buyers from the company direct from the Peterhead Fish Market every morning, before being taken to the company’s warehouse in Aberdeen where it is processed before being sold to local restaurants and in the shop.
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Downies of Whitehills, Whitehills Aberdeenshire
From a small shed come cutting-room to a company now supplying customers both locally and worldwide, Downies has more than 150 years of selling quality fresh fish.
To ensure that only quality fresh Scottish fish is available to customers, Alan Downie specially selects fish at the local markets on a daily basis, buying seasonally to ensure that customers receive the freshest product at a fantastic price.
Once selected, the fish is quickly transported to the factory in Whitehills for processing by a skilled team. The company smokes its own fish and its award-winning Cullen Skink is freshly made on site on a daily basis.
The factory is BRC, SALSA and MSC certified and processes fish for both retail and wholesale clients.
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Rockabill NI
Rockabill NI was established in Ardglass in 2014 by the Rockabill group. The processing plant serves the needs of fishermen from Northern Ireland and Scotland, and enables them to supply products to Irish seafood processor Rockabill Seafood Ltd. Specialising particularly in processing whitefish and scallops, Rockabill NI also has offices in Kilkeel and Portavogie. The company is praised in nominations for the benefits that the business has brought to these ports, and the fishermen. “Always good prices paid, and 24-hour care of the fishing boats that land direct to Rockabill. What I like best is that when you land to Rockabill you land direct to the factory, which cuts out the middle man.”
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Whitelink Seafoods, Fraserburgh
Since James and Marie Sutherland established Whitelink Seafoods in 1974, when they started to buy and pack winkles in the garage at the back of their house, a continual programme of gradual growth, based on sustained re-investment in the fishing industry, has seen the Fraserburgh company develop into both one of the leading processors in north-east Scotland and a major international company.
In addition to the Fraserburgh factory, where 180 staff are employed, Whitelink Seafoods has processing facilities at Newlyn, a production, sales and distribution factory in Boulogne, together with sales offices Germany and Spain and a processing factory in Iceland. Monkfish, catfish, ling, coley, tusk, pollack, cod, megrim, witches, squid, hake, turbot, prawns and scallops are the main species processed daily by highly skilled workers in Whitelink Seafoods Fraserburgh factory.
In 2019 Whitelink Seafoods took delivery of its fourth scalloper, Eternal Light, the company’s first new build, to further underpin consistent supplies of king scallops, which are processed for niche markets.
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