Young’s unveils £128m quarter turnover

YOUNG’S Seafood has posted a first quarter turnover of £128.8 million amid talk of tough challenges ahead coupled with solid growth in retail frozen fish. The company operates on a September to September financial year so quarter one is October to December. EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) for the three-month period to December 31, 2016, emerged at £3 million thanks, says the company, to strong management tackling exceptional challenges and robust cash management. Bill Showalter, who became CEO of Young’s last year, said: ‘We worked collaboratively with our retailer partners to mitigate exceptional Brexit driven foreign exchange and raw material inflation. ‘With strong operational cost management, the results reflect both our underlying direct cost efficiency and our indirect cost management. ‘The anticipated chal- lenging quarter 1 also saw industry wide fish supply availability challenges.’ Young’s is clearly fighting back after the loss of the Sainsbury’s salmon processing contract to Marine Harvest two years ago, which is said to have cost the company £98 million in turnover. Since then it has been picking up new business. But the seafood market is highly competitive with contracts changing hands between companies at regular intervals.