As a haulage contractor and the owner of an ice plant, I cannot express strongly enough the importance of the salmon industry to our business. At the moment we provide fulltime employment for eight men plus six part time jobs in shop, bookkeeping, etc. Without the salmon industry I very much doubt we would be able to have full time employment for the partners in the business, as salmon related work provides roughly 70 per cent of our work.

Likewise, with the decline of the whitefish industry, our ice plant would be a memorial; we would never be able to pay for, if it were not for salmon.

May I take this opportunity to wish all salmon farmers our best wishes for the future and trust they will be able to expand and provide even more employment for Shetland.

The company maintains a trading office with 14 staff, including multi lingual sales staff, a highly qualified quality control manager, logistics and accounting staff. The hatcheries employ nine full time staff plus part time staff.

In summary, the estimated total annual salaries for hatchery staff would amount to £200,000 and, in the case of Framgord, £340,000.

We operate a general veterinary practice based at Bixter with a branch surgery at Scalloway. Since 1991 we have had some involvement with salmon farming, which has grown steadily to be a significant part of our work.

With the downturn in agriculture, this aquaculture work is providing an increasingly significant part of the practice income. Further expansion of the salmon farming industry in Shetland would help to secure employment for at least one vet and one member of staff.

Since February 2000 we have employed David Sutherland, MCVS, working full time in the aquaculture part of the practice.

With the downturn in agriculture, this aquaculture work is providing an increasingly significant part of the practice income. Further expansion of the salmon farming industry in Shetland would help to secure employment for at least one vet and one member of staff.

Our future plans involve an increase in laboratory facilities to improve the examination of samples within Shetland. We also plan to be more involved in general disease control strategy.

We sincerely hope that the salmon farming industry in Shetland remains viable and continues to improve its standards of husbandry and disease control.

Ocean Kinetics was established in 1992, initially employing three people. The company was mainly involved in the repairs of salmon farm cages, barges and work vessels. The company has expanded steadily over the years and now employs 25 to 30 people all on a full time basis. We have an ongoing training programme and are continuing to train school and college leavers.

The company has grown with the salmon industry over the last nine years. Some 80 per cent of all the company's turnover has been fish farm related. The company now has a purpose built workshop with modern manufacturing facilities for manufacturing and fabrication of fish farm equipment.

The salmon farming industry is vital to the continuation and expansion of our business. Without the salmon industry within Shetland the company would at best have to reduce manpower levels by 80 per cent or more likely cease to trade.

Since Oceansafe started trading in 1989 the importance of the local salmon farming industry to the success of the company has grown year by year. Currently Oceansafe employ 10 full time and two seasonal workers. All our workers are multi-skilled and can work on salmon nets or trawl nets as required.

The fishing industry is under going a difficult time at the moment, which is affecting thee turnover and ultimately the viability of many trawlers. As a consequence some staff have been transferred to salmon cage net production.

If the salmon industry were suddenly not to exist in Shetland, our company would be in a very difficult situation. All the staff currently make cage nets, and all staff we have transferred from trawl production to cage net production would be paid off, leaving only three full time and one poor turnover would be reduced by 80 per cent.

As most of our goods are brought in out with Shetland, the freight companies would suffer a reduction in traffic. Haulage companies moving cage nets to and from our services station and all our other suppliers would be adversely affected.

Our is solely involved in the manufacture and supply of ice to the fishing, salmon farming and fishing processing industries. Over the past 15 years we have invested over £1.4 million in the development of two quality-driven modern ice factories at Lerwick and Scalloway. This has been during a period of increasing instability in the seafood industry in general.

As the current problems deepen in the white fish sector, the long-term viability of the ice supply industry rests with a continued growth in the farmed seafood industry.

With the traditional fishing industry at present going through one of the worse periods in its history, whatever the local agencies can do to promote the seafood industry and the salmon in particular, the more chance there is of safeguarding employment.

I hope this confirms our company's role in the seafood industry and its utter reliance on the various sector's continuation for its survival.

Our company currently provides services to all sectors of the fishing and fish farming industries. Of this, 65-70 percent of our business is to the fish farming industry.

With decline in stocks of wild fish, and the steady growth of fish farming, our company now sees a need to expand in line with this growth. We are therefore building a new net store for the manufacture and repair of nets; this will also incorporate a net washing, net drying and net antifouling facility.

By doing this we intend to double our staff from four to eight and possibly to 10. This in turn will not only generate extra jobs in our company, but also bring more business to the port of Scalloway as a whole.

This is a major investment by our company, which has been brought on by the increase in fish farming in Shetland, and an investment, which we feel, is justified by the extra business the fish farming industry has provided.

Nicolson Plant is a company involved in plant hire, haulage contracting, skip hire, van and car hire and quarry operations, employing a total of 38 full time staff.

Since the beginning of time of the salmon industry we have constructed access roads, site preparations and pier works for various salmon companies.

1995 was the start of our haulage fleet, mainly working with three farms, delivering feed, nets, equipment and harvesting salmon. Our haulage operations are 70 percent dependant on salmon related work.

In our plant division we hire out a number of loadalls, forklifts, welders, generators and compressors mostly on permanent hire to salmon farms.

From our quarry we supply and deliver aggregate and armour for piers, breakwaters, concrete works, road construction and hardstanding site areas.

As we are largely dependent on the salmon industry for all aspects of our business, any downturn would have devastating effects for Nicolson Plant and our workforce.

Featured Content

text test test test