A DATE at Buckingham Palace this spring awaits a Scottish seafood chief who was awarded the CBE in the Queen's New Year Honours.
Alastair Salvesen, has been a leading figure in the UK seafood industry for nearly thirty years, althogh the award was for services to the arts in Scotland.
He joined Dawnfresh Seafoods in Whitehaven, Cumbria thirty years ago and in 1983 led a management buyout (from Christian Salvesen), later building a Seafood Centre of Excellence in Bothwell Park, Lanarkshire, at a cost of nearly £9 million
Over time the Dawnfresh coating business involving scampi and fish cakes has grown and the company now supplies 40 per cent of the breaded and battered scampi sold in the UK and, following the recent acquisition of Scot Trout, is responsible for more than 80 per cent of the farmed rainbow trout sold on the home market.
Mr Salvesen is a former president of the British Frozen Food Federation,and has also served as chairman of the Shellfish Committee of the UK Association of Frozen Food Producers and is on the council of the Shellfish Association of Great Britain.
In 2001 he was appointed a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and in the same year became President of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society which runs the world famous Royal Highland Show. As a strong supporter of the arts he sponsored an annual travelling scholarship for the best young Scottish artist and has gifted a new organ to St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.
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