Fort William-based equipment manufacturer Norfab Products Ltd ceased trading at the end of October and went into voluntary liquidation. Established by Chris and Pat Jones in England in March 1986, the company relocated to the highlands in 1988. As well as having served the UK market, over the years Norfab built up an impressive record in exporting their products all over the aquaculture world.

Mr Jones said: "We saw the writing on the wall as much as three years ago, when the industry began to consolidate into just a handful of large companies. Most of our business traditionally came from dealing one-to-one with smaller producers and since they’ve all but disappeared, our customer base has gone with them and left us with a small number of very large companies to deal with. They are having a hard time of it themselves and with fewer bread and butter projects to work on, we’ve found it impossible to carry on. The situation is out of the hands of anybody in aquaculture, because all our lives are dictated by the retail trade, where the real money is made. The advent of central purchasing by the main primary producers hasn’t helped either, with the supply of consumables, once a steady earner, having evaporated."

He added: "We could have diversified into other local work as we did back in 1990 when times were hard, but I have to say that my heart simply wasn’t in it. Norfab was an aquaculture engineering specialist, in much the same way as Land Rover are an off-road car maker. They don’t make small hatchbacks and Norfab didn’t do jobbing work."

Norfab are carrying on supplying spare parts and advice to keep Norfab’s machinery running. ‘I want to make sure that everybody who showed faith in us by buying our machines is able to keep them working for many years to come. I’m very proud of our products, all born from my own imagination and look forward to seeing them at work for a long time yet’, Mr Jones added.

*www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish European Fish Trader, Fishing Monthly, Fish Farming Today, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Fishermens’ Federation Diary, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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