Campaign launched to promote Shetland landings

Land in Shetland, a joint campaign by Lerwick Port Authority and Shetland Islands Council (SIC) to encourage more skippers to land their catches to the islands’ fishmarkets, has launched the first in a series of promotional videos along with a dedicated website.

Given current high fuel prices, there are clearly significant cost and carbon footprint savings to be made from landing in Shetland, say the team behind the campaign.

New state-of-the-art fishmarkets in Lerwick and Scalloway have ‘substantially increased daily landing capacity, and the modern infrastructure, including its efficient chilling, ensures best quality of produce is maintained’. More than half of all the fish landed in the UK comes from within 100 nautical miles of Shetland, and ‘with such first-class facilities and support services available, it makes clear sense to land in Shetland’.

The videos, featuring fishing skippers and port and industry representatives, highlight five benefits to boats:

Time and money saved from reduced steaming to fishing grounds
Electronic auction with prices ‘as good as if not better than markets elsewhere in Scotland’ • Easy berthing and fast, efficient landing into chilled markets
Ready availability of support services such as ice, boxes and engineering
Carbon footprint reduced.

Captain Calum Grains, chief executive of Lerwick Port Authority, said: “At the centre of prolific fishing grounds, Shetland has clear advantages for the catching sector in landing here. With better times in prospect, it is important to remind the industry of the benefits of using our state-of-the-art markets, which also reflect our commitment to its future.”

Councillor Robert Thomson, chair of the SIC Harbour Board, said: “Shetland Islands Council has recently invested in a new fishmarket at Scalloway, demonstrating our long-term commitment to the fishing industry in the heart of the North Sea fishing grounds.

“The modern fishmarkets at Lerwick and Scalloway now offer fishing vessels a commercially attractive location to land their catches. Land in Shetland and you’ll save time and fuel; the electronic auction means that you can achieve excellent prices too.”

The first video features Andrew Bremner, skipper of the Wick-registered seine-net vessel Boy Andrew, who regularly lands into both Lerwick and Scalloway. Forthcoming videos will feature James Anderson, skipper of the Lerwick- registered Alison Kay, and representatives of the Lerwick and Scalloway markets.

The website, which explains the rationale for landing in Shetland and includes an infographic featuring favourable price comparisons with other ports, can be viewed at: landinshetland.com

The first campaign video can be viewed here…

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 £3.30 here.

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