Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Scottish fishermen are willing to sail an additional 48 hours to Denmark, where their catches can get double that after falling prices at home after Brexit.
A ship loaded with 15 tonnes of monkfish arriving on Thursday night was expected to clean its Scottish captain 225,000 crowns ($ 36,700) more than it would in Petershead, Britain’s largest fishing port, Jesper Kongsted said. a fish auction in Hanstholm, on the North Sea coast of Denmark. .
UK shoppers are moving away from more expensive fish varieties, as paperwork and queues can mean they are not fresh when they reach European customers. Scottish Seafood said prices for many seafood species have fallen from 40% to 50% just this week, with some dropping to 80%.
“Boris Johnson probably forgot to explain what it would mean to leave the EU for the ability of fishermen to sell in the European market,” Kongsted said.
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The impact of the Brexit transition on the Scottish seafood industry has been far-reaching, from computer failures to a lack of clarity on paperwork, which has made export efforts “impossible”, Donna Fordyce said. the chief executive of Seafood From Scotland said in a statement.
With about a third of Scottish vessels moored and others redirecting to Denmark, many fishermen are on the mainland and the processing industry, which employs 10,000, is suffering.
James Withers, CEO of Scotland’s Food & Drink industry group, estimates seafood traders are currently losing £ 1 million ($ 1.4 million) a day due to customs chaos.
The UK landed almost £ 1bn of fish in 2019, much of it in Scotland.
“No party can solve this problem overnight, but the losses in the sector are increasing and the situation is urgent,” Fordyce said. “We have days to fix it, not weeks.”
The UK government has pledged a £ 100 million package to help rebuild the country’s fishing fleet and the industry’s old infrastructure.
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Back in Denmark, Kongsted believes that vessels unloading in the Nordic country are in a hurry to solve an immediate problem and that the number of trawlers arriving could decrease as solutions are found in the UK.
– With the assistance of Joe Mayes