Scotland’s Business Minister has announced that a major jobs fair will be held in a north-east port next month to find work for hundreds of people facing redundancy.
Young’s Seafood Ltd shocked Fraserburgh earlier this year when it announced it was closing it’s Watermill Road operation, threatening nearly 1,000 with Christmas redundancies.
Following sustained local pressure and the formation of a Government-backed task force, the company has moved forward with a revised plan that would see the plant remain open, with a reduced number of staff, meaning that hundreds of staff will still be made redundant.
Now, in an effort to get people back into work when the cuts are made, a jobs fair will be held in the town on January 28.
Business Minister Fergus Ewing chaired the first meeting of the Fraserburgh task force in October and said government agencies were seeking new contracts for the factory.
Last night, he added that plans to help the local economy were now beginning to “take shape”.
Mr Ewing added: “We know that the majority of directly employed Young’s staff continue to work, but they face redundancy in the New Year, while many agency staff have already been redeployed or moved away.
“We are engaged with other employers in the area, across all sectors, to flag up vacancies to affected employees, so that we can minimise the time people may be out of work and a major jobs fair will take place in Fraserburgh on January 28.”
The task force is made up of union representatives, the Scottish Government and the local authority.
Mr Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, said the group was also collaborating to find future opportunities for fish processing in Fraserburgh.
He said: “We are also supporting ideas from the public and private sectors to regenerate Fraserburgh and the wider area, including applications for lottery funding, and new opportunities to use industrial land and town centre development.”
Young’s announced it had lost a multimillion-pound contract for salmon processing in June.
The news threatened jobs at the firm’s Grantown plant, Spey Valley Smokehouse, where 24 people are employed.
However, their jobs were saved at the eleventh hour when Young’s confirmed that an “alternative option” had been agreed to keep it open.
However, it is understood that more than 600 jobs from Fraserburgh will still be lost.