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AN important Spanish fishing delegation arrived in Grimsby yesterday seeking to strengthen trade connections with the port.
Organised by the Humber Trade Corridor and the Spanish and Vigo chambers of Commerce, visitors spent the day touring Grimsby’s fishing and seafood facilities and talking to industry leaders.
Some members of the Spanish delegation took the opportunity to inquire about the possibility of sending fish to Grimsby for processing and distribution.
Ruben Fernandez Alija, foreign trade manager with the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, said the delegation included representatives from two or three companies who were interested in bringing fish into Grimsby and wanted to explore those possibilities.
One of them is Pescaberbes SA and director Javier Pereira said his company had a number of fresh fish trawlers and one freezer vessel, adding that he was keen to meet Grimsby processors interested in taking his catches.He added that it was more likely to be containerised and frozen fish rather than fresh fish landed from actual trawlers.
Simon Dwyer, chairman of the Humber Trade Corridor, welcomed the visitors and outlined Grimsby's great seafood strengths. He said the port processed 70 per cent of all UK seafood, and 80 per cent of the country’s chilled seafood, as well being the UK's largest salmon processing centre, taking farmed supplies from Scotland and Norway.
All the major British processors had a base in Grimsby and every large supermarket group from Sainsbury’s and Tesco to Waitrose and Marks & Spencer sourced most of their fish from the area.
“We import over 60 different species from 30 different countries,” he added. “We also have the largest concentration of cold storage in Europe and an important, but still under utilised fresh food hub at Humberside Airport.”
He said that thanks to the efforts of the Trade Corridor and the Humber Seafood Cluster Grimsby’s neighbouring port of Immingham had now overtaken Felixstowe as Britain’s main seafood handling centre.
The work of Seafish, the UK authority on the fishing and seafood industry, was outlined by Julie Snowden, Seafish’s project manager. She said Britons consumed fish worth £5.65 billion a year of which around half was imported.While consumers remained conservative in their fish eating habits by sticking to what they know best, one of the UK’s big strengths was its fish and chip shops of which there were 11,000 in the country and an important outlet for fish.
Simon Derrick, International Projects Manager at the Grimsby Institute, said that for the past few years the college had been carrying out important consultancy work, with the Humber Seafood Institute and Seafish to develop the trade corridor. “Our work is truly global,” he said. “We are developing systems with Indonesia, Africa and Pakistan to help these countries raise their standards so they can export into the EU. The institute not only provided seafood training for the industry within the industry, but also offered foundation degrees."
Bristol University had brought up a specialist team to work on food refrigeration and research while the Institute and Trade Corridor were looking at ways of identifying and removing barriers to trade.
The Trade Corridor had also strengthened links with two important seafood supply countries, Iceland and Canada which had led to a big increase in fish products through Immingham from Canada in particular.
The delegation later met fish market and fish merchanting chiefs before travelling to Billingsgate Fish Market in London today.
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