The company is also expected to announce a commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from its manufacturing operations in Britain by 30 per cent by 2020.

Other pledges are likely to include a promise to cut the amount of packaging used in its products by 15 per cent within four years and to reduce the volume of water used by its in-house production operation by one-fifth.

The move is part of an an going campaign to give the company a greener image. It is now 18 months since Birds Eye was bought from Unilever by the private equity company Permira in a deal worth £1.1-billion. But the most controversial move was a decision to close the Hull fish factory with the loss of between 500 and 600 jobs, with seafood production moved to Germany. However the workforce was given probably the most generous redundancy package ever seen in the frozen food industry.

Birds Eye Chief Executive Martin Glenn told the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend that he was striving to get across the message that there was no quality compromise by buying frozen fish rather than chilled - and frozen food food was often far more nutritious than iits so called fresh-chilled counterpart.

There is also increasing speculation that Permira may float Birds Eye Iglo on the London Stock Exchange within a couple of years.

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish 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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