A leading north-east fisheries advisor has claimed that the situation at a crisis-hit processing plant may not be as bad as first feared.
Charles Buchan, who sits on Aberdeenshire Council’s fisheries development partnership, last night said the Scottish Government was hard at work to turn around the fortunes of employees facing the sack at Fraserburgh’s Young’s Seafood plant.
The factory announced earlier this year that it had lost a multi-million pound contract for salmon and would be making hundreds of workers redundant.
On Friday, Mr Buchan and the partnership were given an update on how the government’s task force is progressing with finding new jobs for the at-risk workforce.
At the meeting, it was revealed that other processors in the port would also benefit from the work.
Mr Buchan said: “The news might not be so bad any more – we might not find 600 people on the unemployment register.
“The task force is looking at the whole of Fraserburgh to try and get extra jobs into the town, and not only in the fish processing sector.
“They are also thinking of helping processors with various technical issues to find ways of increasing efficiency, but I can’t really go into the details at this stage because it involves other people and other sources of capital.
“The Scottish Government is spending a lot of effort, money and time to set up systems to get anyone with a redundancy notice another job.”
Calls had previously been made by local councillor Ian Tait to declare the town an enterprise zone to further boost recovery efforts.
But Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism Fergus Ewing has all but ruled out granting the beleaguered town the status.
The scheme would have reduced business rates and streamlined the planning process for businesses in Fraserburgh.