Bass battering forces Môn fishery to find new species
THE boss of a troubled £12m fish farm has vowed to find a new high-value species to sell to save the site.
Anglesey Aquaculture at Penmon on Anglesey had produced thousands of tonnes of sea bass a year - with its customers including upmarket supermarket Waitrose.
But production has come to a halt after the UK was swamped with low cost sea bass from Turkey and Greece - making it impossible to compete.
This has seen jobs already slashed from 32 to just eight and now a battle is on to save the plant.
It means securing investment to change to a ‘higher value’ species to farm including sole, salmon and turbot.
John Watters, managing director at Anglesey Aquaculture, is the man charged with finding that funding.
He said: “We have a positive plan that will secure the future of the site and these are rolling but we will not know for sure for a few weeks.
“We need to have a plan that will make money and the investment will come, that is what we are working on.
“We are looking at higher value species but don’t want to give further details at this stage of the species we are looking at.
“Our hope is that we c can start to take people on again in the future.” Back in 2012 the farm - which has received more than £5m in Welsh Government and European funding - went into administration under Selonda UK.
But it was saved when it was bought out of administration by new owners who started to trade as Anglesey Aquaculture Ltd.