A POTENTIALLY serious crisis which could have halted fish supplies between Iceland and the Humber markets appears to have been averted.
The problem blew up last week when cash payments from fish selling agents and merchants to suppliers in Iceland were being held up by British clearing banks who wrongly assumed that they could not trade with that country.
The misunderstanding appears to been the result of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision to freeze the UK assets of at least one Icelandic bank until savers money was paid over.
But the Humber fish trade suddenly found itself innocently caught up in the dispute when payments were not getting through to suppliers in Iceland. The Grimsby Fish Merchants Association immediately stepped in and following a series of communications with Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell and the Bank of England, the clearing banks were given authorisation to unblock the financial arteries.
FMA chief executive Steve Norton told BBC-1's Politics Show yesterday that the problem was being sorted out thanks to the efforts of the local MP and the Bank of England.
He added: 'We have been working hard to ensure funds can be transferred. Grimsby handles 27,000 tonnes of Icelandic chilled fish a year for our members and had not there was a real danger jobs could have been lost.' Austin Mitchell said: 'It would have been disastrous for Grimsby - the market would have come to a halt and fish and chip shops throughout the north would not have got any fish.'
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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