UK-based Thistle Seafoods has bought a Dawnfresh Seafoods’ asset out of administration.
The deal, for an undisclosed sum, sees the 100,000 sq ft Dawnfresh fish processing facility in Uddingston, Scotland, taken over in a going-concern sale by Thistle, which is based in Peterhead, also in Scotland. All 40 employees at the site will transfer to Thistle.
The industrial unit includes processing, warehousing, administration and cold store facilities together with a range of plant and equipment. Thistle said it plans to “develop the Uddingston site into an advanced added value seafood processing and distribution centre with ready access to retail and wholesale customers and markets in the UK, the EU and further afield”.
Dawnfresh, a supplier of 10,000 tons of seafood a year to domestic and international retail and foodservice channels, and the owner of brands including Silver Tide, Loch Etive and RR Spink & Sons, went into administration in February. Five months earlier it has revealed it was planning to close the Uddingston facility this year but was expanding its plant in another Scottish town, Arbroath.
After it went under, its administrator, FRP Advisory, sold the Arbroath facility to another local peer, Lossie Seafoods, in a deal that saved 249 jobs.
Another part of the business, Dawnfresh Farming Limited, which operates seven fish farms in Northern Ireland and Scotlan,d continues to trade solvently and will be formally marketed for sale by FRP in the coming months.
Commenting on the newly-announced deal, Ryan Scatterty, Thistle Seafoods’ managing director, said: “The acquisition of the Uddingston facility is an ideal fit for our business as it will provide us with a strategic processing, storage and distribution hub with ready access to the key transport networks to better serve our domestic customers.
“It will also allow us to further expand our product offering and capitalise on our fast-growing export markets.”
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