Tall Ships Race in Lerwick

Lerwick was proud to host the Tall Ships Race for only the 2nd time, held between the 21-25 July. Plenty of entertainment and activities were organised during this time, although the weather wasnt always friendly! The ships were delayed leaving Lerwick by 24 hours due to high winds.

Shetland Catch was naturally involved with such an event and was one of the main Host Port Sponsors. One of the benefits was an on-board reception on the MV Christian Radich, a Norwegian vessel, which our invited guests thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you all for coming!

Many of the vessels and crews in the Race were Norwegian, so last weeks terrible events in Norway affected many participants. Shetland has very close historical, cultural and economic links with Norway so we were all shocked by the tragedy.

On a more positive note, we are starting to look forward to the summer herring season. This is expected to start around the middle of August with landings from our regular Shetland, Scottish & Irish suppliers. We plan to produce a variety of whole and filleted herring of various sizes in 20kg air blast frozen cartons so please contact us at sales@shetlandcatch.com if you have an interest.

John Angus

28th July 2011

Advertising in Klaipeda

Following our visit to Klaipeda last month, Translit kindly agreed to place our name & logo on Kaminatrans Coldstore. This is in recognition of Shetland Catch being their biggest customer last year. Thanks to Karolis & his team for their support and we look forward to shipping even greater quantities to Klaipeda this year!

Visit to Klaipeda, Lithuania, 14-17 June 2011

During this quiet time in our production seasons, the sales team like to take the opportunity to visit some of our customers & service providers to discuss any issues from the previous season and possibilities for the forthcoming one. Last week, Alan Leask, Kay Flaws and I had the pleasure of visiting Klaipeda, one of the distribution hubs for our mackerel.

The first day of our visit was spent with a very enjoyable boat trip on the MV Lana from the village of Nida, located close to the Kaliningrad border on the Curonian Spit. We sailed across the bay and had lunch at a riverside village before returning to Nida, a voyage that took around 5 hours.

On our return to Klaipeda we decided to inaugurate the Translit Grand Prix at the local go-kart track. A very competitive race ensued, which was won by The STIGitas Ambrazevicius of Benko Services, following by myself then Alan Leask. Unfortunately there was no champagne available for the traditional post-race celebrations!

The 2nd day was spent with business meetings and touring the coldstores we use for our mackerel. It was very interesting to see the recent developments in the port, the re-building of coldstores & warehouses and the increase in containerised cargo. Thanks to Eduardas Galuskinas of Klaipedos Smelte for showing us around.

We managed to surprise an old friend, Einar Einarsson, Captain of MV Silver River, who was planning a quiet lunch before joining his ship. We enjoyed such local delicacies as cold beetroot soup, pigs ears & zeppelinni..yum yum!

We would like to thank Karolis, Arturus, Natalya and all the Translit team for their very kind hospitality during our stay and we hope to return this in Shetland soon!!

John Angus.

21st June 2011

World Food Moscow, 14-17 September 2010

Shetland Catch exhibited together with our close partners, Russian Fish Company (RFC), at last months World Food Moscow exhibition. Our stand was beautifully designed by Lena Zhuravskaya from RFC and it actually won the prize for the best stand at the exhibition! Congratulations to Lena and her team.

We had fruitful discussions with our regular customers from eastern European countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, as well as having the opportunity to discuss the autumn mackerel season with our exclusive Russian partners, RFC.

Eastern Europe is the main market for our mackerel production and World Food provides the perfect time and place to meet many of our customers and negotiate deals.