Scotland’s first female fish farming director keen to build more links with Taynuilt
DAWNFRESH boss Alison Hutchins is Scotland’s first female fish farming director.
Ms Hutchins was in Taynuilt on Monday to introduce herself personally to the community council, keen to build more links with the village.
She asked councillors what they wanted to see more of from the company, which has sites on nearby Loch Etive and Loch Awe, and was told ‘more timely responses would be useful’ to stories in the press and incidents such as fish escapes in the loch.
Ms Hutchins answered a number of other questions from councillors explaining 27 local people were now employed at the Loch Etive site, compared to 13 five years ago, and said there were another 10 jobs at Loch Awe.
‘We’ve no intention of letting that slip,’ she added.
Ms Hutchins, who worked for Dawnfresh for five years before her new role, also said in terms of the salmon industry Dawnfresh was a small producer but when it came to farmed trout ‘we are large’, revealing all trout found in Marks & Spencers and Sainburys stores were supplied by them.
She said 60 per cent of its trout went to UK supermarkets with 40 per cent exported to America.
The possibility of processing in the local area was something she would like to look at in the future, Ms Hutchins told the meeting, but said for the time being it was being carried out elsewhere, including in Arbroath where some of the fish goes to be smoked.
Dawnfresh is heavily regulated by watchdogs including Marine Scotland and by Argyll and Bute Council as well as all its customers said Ms Hutchins, who also reported there was no problem with sea lice in its waters ‘just now’.
‘Wild fish bring in the sea lice but there’s no sea lice just now because of the rainfall.
‘We’ve not done any sea lice treatment since November,’ she said.