Sandoy Seafood closes down

On Tuesday morning, staff at the Sandoy Seafood filleting plant in Skopun were told that they had lost their jobs as the plant was closing down.

Sandoy Seafood was run by Mowi, a partnership between Marine Harvest and Delta Seafood.

Mowi is in the process of starting up salmon-farming activities off the coast of Sandoy, but the local filleting plant will not be part of this activity. 

The farmed salmon will instead be processed at the Vaðhorn filleting plant in Strendur, Eysturoy.

Hard competition

Filleting plants that rely on buying fish for processing – including Sandoy Seafood, Delta Seafood in Suðuroy and Vaðhorn in Strendur, Eysturoy – struggle to compete with private fish buyers who export their fish to low-salary countries such as Lithuania.

MP Bjarni Hammer has repeatedly spoken of the “unfair competition” between these filleting plants and the individual why buy fish at auctions with the sole purpose of exporting it for cheaper processing.

Hammer says that a provision in the new law on marine resource management could help the local filleting stations. 

The provision states that a minimum of 20 percent of landed fish should not be beheaded. Since most overseas filleting plants prefer beheaded fish, this would go a long way towards ensuring a future for the struggling Faroese filleting plants, he says.

But unfortunately, he adds, this provision has not been announced officially.

Translated by prosa.fo