£14m awarded in Scots marine funding

2024/2025 Marine Fund Scotland grant recipients confirmed

Sixty-Seven Projects will share a total of £14m in funding under the latest round of the Marine Fund Scotland.

The funding is shared between sea fisheries, seafood processing and aquaculture projects, along with a range of other sectors and initiatives, including marine litter and recycling schemes.

The largest grant of £1,698,472.99 was awarded to Seafood Scotland for UK and export market development. The organisation was also awarded a separate amount of £150,000 for the Responsible Seafood Summit 2024, which takes place next week (21-24 October).

Aberdeen-based net recycler DekMar Ltd received £700,965 to support its multi polymer and rope recycling operation. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation also received a sizeable sum, with the organisation awarded £667,041 to aid the fourth phase of its involvement in the Independent Fisheries Science Support Scheme project.

Whitelink Seafoods received £319,089.50 towards the company’s project to install solar panels. Peterhead-based GT Seafoods was awarded £565,937 to support its plan to upgrade and expand the company’s processing facility. Another processor to receive funding was Joseph Robertson (Aberdeen), which was awarded £188,427 to upgrade and install new processing equipment.

A Fisheries Innovation and Sustainability (FIS) project for winter sea trials of the Smartrawl device, which uses AI camera technology to identify and release non-target species from a trawl before they can enter the codend, was awarded £126,832.77. FIS was also awarded an additional £27,085.53 for its net-zero fishing vessel power data project.

Welcoming the news, FIS executive director Kara Brydson said: “We are delighted with this support for our projects with Macduff Ship Design and Heriot-Watt University. We all know money is tight, so FIS makes sure that every penny counts to keep fishermen safe and competitive as we meet net-zero targets and tackle bycatch.

“With this funding we will put the fully integrated Smartrawl system to the test in winter sea fishing conditions, and measure torque from vessels to identify realistic alternative fuel solutions for each vessel type we are investigating.”

Meanwhile, the Scottish White Fish Producers’ Association received £32,700 for its worker-driven social responsibility initiative. The Clyde Fishermen’s Trust received £72,003 for its Port Glasgow community, training and innovation hub project, whilst a number of universities were also awarded funding, including the University of Glasgow, which received £89,984.42 to support work with the creel industry to reduce marine megafauna entanglement risk.

A number of unnamed private individuals received grants for a range of projects, including £16,000 for an under-10m new entrant and £18,000 for an applicant looking to buy their first fishing vessel. A total of £1,840 was awarded to two separate applications by individuals for projects seeking to improve catch quality.

Other initiatives to be awarded funding include KIMO’s Fishing for Litter Scotland 2024 (£299,183.42), the Scottish Shellfish Marketing Group’s added-value recyclable packaging project (£221,125) and Fishing into the Future’s Clyde fisheries resource education programme (£51,015.20).

Details of individuals, businesses, organisations and communities awarded funding can be accessed at: https://bit.ly/42mIo6d

Fishing News will look in detail at some of the individual awards in future issues.

This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.

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