No Catch had around 130 employees on its books working on the sea sites, the hatchery, the processing plant as well as in administration and marketing across several offices in Shetland and on the UK mainland.

The company went into administration with debts of more than £40 million on February 19.

Administrators Grant Thornton quickly made redundant around 30 people, mainly in marketing and the processing plant, as the company adjusted to the new regime.

Earlier this month, the administrators announced that they had sold off farming licences, barges, cages and other assets to a consortium of Grieg Hjaltland Seafarms and Scottish Sea Farms for around £7 million.

The sale had no immediate job impacts as staff working as the sea sites will continue to be employed by the administrators for another year to ongrow between 300,000 and 400,000 cod still in cages.

The transfer of assets to Hjaltland and SSF will only take place once the cages are emptied.

As both companies talk of boosting production by 2010 they will probably soak up the cod farming staff working at sea.

Meanwhile, it emerged that staff numbers at the company's processing plant in Scalloway are down from 50 in February to 13 today, mainly because many of the East European factory workers there have drifted away to other job opportunities in the fish processing sector in Shetland and on the mainland.

Staff at the plant expect to be in employment for another year or so to gut the farmed cod before it is being sold on the islands' fish markets, often to prices below that for wild fish.

Last week, joint administrator Daniel Smith was able to announce the sale of the No Catch sea trout business to a local company set up by former No Catch director Gordon Johnson and the company's production manager Robert Williamson.

As a result two employees will transfer from No Catch to new company QA Fish Ltd.

Meanwhile, expectations are high that other parts of the No Catch group, such as the hatchery in Sandwick, the mussel farming business and Grading Systems with its unique way of sorting large fish from small for harvesting, will be sold over the coming weeks.

Sales of most of these elements of the firm are expected in the next weeks, and the jobs will probably be retained in the islands "because they are not easy to move".

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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