Well 4 days to be exact! Yes, the wanderers have returned from yet another successful show in Brussels. We thoroughly enjoy our time in Brussels, as it gives us a chance to meet with potential customers as well as allowing us to spend time with our current ones. We had some very useful feedback from our customers regarding their results from the mackerel season and also enjoyed discussed the forthcoming herring season with them.

The stand was the same this year as it has been for the previous 3 years. Our customers seem to really enjoy “getting away from it all” in our stand. We hope to keep this closed in effect for future years since it makes our time with customers more relaxing and more private for discussing business.

Susan Deaves of Frogworks did an excellent job, as always of making sure everyone was kept watered and fed during the week in Brussels. Her and her team of stand builders do an excellent job of assembling the stand and making sure everything works the way it should. From our point of view, it is great to be able to arrive at the show on the Tuesday morning and be ready to hit the ground running.

On Wednesday, we had the pleasure of a visit on our stand from Scotland’s First Minister, Mr Alex Salmond. Mr Salmond was in Brussels for the day to visit the show and host the Seafood Scotland party, which showcased the best of Scotland’s seafood.

Meanwhile back at the factory, production of blue whiting has been going really well. We have some very good landings from Norwegian vessels, particularly the Mogsterfjord and Mogsterhav. We also had a landing of good quality fish from the Tait’s vessel, Challenge, and we hope to see more local vessels landing in future.

The freshness and quality is very good just now as the catching area is only 16 hours away from Shetland. We are the closest factory to the fishing grounds and this is an important factor for the boats given the high price of fuel. Next year, the boats intend to wait until end of March/beginning of April before beginning to catch blue whiting so we have high hopes for increasing our volume of blue whiting.

If you would be interested in finding out more information about blue whiting and how production is processing at Shetland Catch, then please contact a member of our sales team:sales@shetlandcatch.com

Lerwick Port Authority have commenced their £12m harbour dredging project this month. This project will improve harbour access by deepening the north channel from 6m to 9m. The primary objective is to attract oil rig decommissioning business but there may also be benefits to Shetland Catch, such as the possibility to reclaim land around our factory to facilitate a future expansion, or to increase the size of reefer vessels we can load.