Grimsby - It's Young's at heart

THE Telegraph reports today on how Young's Seafood has swooped for The Seafood Company, a Sussex-based firm with major shellfish operations in the chilled sector. Here's my take...

THIS major swoop by Wynne Griffiths and his team at Young’s is yet another demonstration of the strength Grimsby now has in the food sector.
With turnover predicted to hit £540-million next month, the seafood giant really is a company to be proud of.
And the pride it injects in Grimsby with its advertising campaign – set to hit our televisions again this autumn – reverberates around the whole process industry.
While frozen food is an international business, chilled food – and, for Grimsby, particularly seafood – is a strong, growing and thriving market that needs to be near its customers.
And with 40-million consumers within a four-hour drive and major consignments arriving at Immingham, Europe’s Food Town is here to stay.
Once a world-class fishing port, it is now a world-class seafood processor.
Ever since fridge-freezers became a regular feature in domestic kitchens, Grimsby has played a pivotal role in filling them.
By the dawn of the Sixties, the frozen food market had increased by more than 500 per cent and you could find such $in almost two thirds of the UK’s households.
The supermarket culture and dawn of the microwave era enhanced the appeal of such food as we headed into the Eighties.
Now with pressures on our time, and more awareness of our diets, "quality", "freshness" and "healthy eating" are watchwords that seafood ticks every time.
The geographical importance of our great town was quickly realised in the post-war boom, and put into words well by the $chairman of Bird’s Eye, JR Parratt.
Opening the Ladysmith Road plant back in 1956, he observed: "It strikes me that this site, with the Lincolnshire agricultural plain to the west and a major fishing port on its doorstep, is as well situated as any quick freezing factory could be."
Bird’s Eye may have gone, but a raft of hi-tech, high-value businesses have taken on that very philosophy – boosted by the expertise in maintenance and logistics that comes as part of such a strong cluster.
Now the local authority’s economic development team uses the same simple analysis in their literature as they seek to bring more companies here.
Simply put, here on the South Bank we have easy access to major domestic, European and international markets via Britain’s largest port.
Grimsby is also on the verge of one of the UK’s primary agricultural areas, with field to factory transport taking no more than 90 minutes.
Quality, range and access to produce has been a significant factor in encouraging companies to locate here.
To celebrate this, and the major strides being taken through investment and innovation, don’t miss a special $24-page supplement on Europe’s Food Town, free with your Telegraph on Tuesday.