Tom  made a major  contribution to the fishing  industry, helping to transform the frozen seafood trade with supplies to key UK retailers and wholesalers and to food service outlets.As managing director of Seabay he also pioneered the export of Grimsby fish to Intermarche, the French supermarket equivalent of Tesco.

Called up in the Army for National Service where he was commissioned, he was tempted to sign on as a regular officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, but decided it was not a wise move for a young man about to get married.

In 1956, aged 21, he joined the firm of William Kendall, which supplied fish to retailers in Devon and Cornwall. He worked in sales and found he was quite good at it. It was not long before his talents were spotted by Joe Sprott, the founder of Eskimo Frozen Foods. Eskimo was very much a pioneering business developing fish fingers (then a relatively new concept) and other fish  products for supermarket freezer cabinets.

In 1968 Eskimo Fropax Frood, as it was then known, became part of Findus and Joe Sprott left to join catering magnate Charles Forte. Tom then decided to leave the fish business for something entirely different. He joined the Initial Towel Company which supplied linen towels and other services to thousands of corporate washrooms around the country. 

Family commitments eventually prompted his return to Grimsby and he went back into the industry, joining the well known local firm of Rex Kemp which had also acquired the services of the late John Holt from Associated Fisheries. Later he bought a North Shields firm called Ocean Foods, which not only gave him a solid brand name, but more importantly a foothold in the growing frozen market. 

He strengthened the business by recruiting Steve Stevenson and Colin Harris  to the management team. They decided to stake their future in frozen fish by teaming up with Seabay owned by Sjoviktrawl from Norway, which also operated their own trawler fleet. The new Grimsby business traded very successfully by deciding to stay clear of the UK supermarket retail business because they were throwing their eight about and starting to make unreasonable demands on suppliers.

Instead Seabay looked across the Channel to France where the big retail chains  there were hungry for any type of good quality fish they could get. More importantly, they wanted species like hake and coley which British consumers wouldn’t buy. Seabay began selling Norwegian scallops to French giants such as Intermarche and then moved into other areas such a fish portions and IQF fillets.

Tom and Steve Stevenson left Seabay in 2002 and he looked after his other main interest, the trading company Roy Priestley Seafood, in which he had a 50 per cent share, for a further two years before retiring. He also worked as a fishing journalist, writing an informative and frequently witty column for the magazine Fish Trader. This gave him a platform to express his strongly held views about the industry.

For example, he believed that fish merchants were never given the credit they deserved for their role in keeping the Grimsby industry alive after the trawlers had gone. As such he was an active member of the Grimsby Fish Merchants Association.

Steve Norton, chief executive of the Grimsby FMA, said: “I was very sorry to hear about Tom and on behalf of the board of directors and members we would  like to convey our condolences to his family.

“Tom was a stalwart of the industry and is the last of the ‘old guard’, a colourful character in every way.  He always championed the role of the merchant. Even after retirement he retained an interest in the industry.”

 Tom Omley leaves a wife Joyce, a son Matt and three daughters, Jane, Debra and Sarah, and seven grandchildren. The funeral service will be held at Old Clee Parish  Church, Grimsby on Friday, January 20, at 1.20pm, followed by family committal at Grimsby Crematorium.

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