Ewan McColl
Marine Harvest: 1988-present
When McColl started with Marine Harvest in 1988, he never intended to stay with the company. ‘I had just left school and I saw a job advertised as a harvest planning assistant’, he explains. ‘I never planned to stay; that was 27 years ago and I’m still here.’
McColl was brought in at a time when Marine Harvest was increasing production. ‘It was still pretty small-scale compared to now’, he says. ‘We were harvesting a few thousand tonnes a year, which has increased over the years – mainly through merger, but there has been some organic growth – and now we’re doing in excess of 50,000 tonnes.’
The way in which the fish are harvested has also changed significantly since 1988. Back then all of the fish were harvested on site’, explains McColl. ‘It was extremely labour intensive. We had our own small fleet of trucks, and we would bring them to each site with bins full of ice. The fish would be hand-netted, hit over the head with wooden
priests and put in the bins of ice. The bins would then be filled with water and driven back for processing, either to the new plant at Blar Mhor, or Lochailort, which we kept running until around 1989.’
As the operation got bigger the time soon came when the company reached the limits of what could be achieved harvesting on site. ‘We were using bigger boats and bigger trucks, but we were still harvesting on site, using wooden priests’, says McColl. ‘The next step was a move away from manual to mechanical stunning. In 2003 we began to use well boats, which would collect the fish live on site and take them live to a central point for harvesting. This, as well as the shift to automated stunning, was crucial; by then we’d reached the limits of what we could do.
‘We are currently using two well boats, and occasionally three, including the first fifirst vessel from 2003, the Norwegian-built Ronja Commander’, he continues. contitinues. ‘These vessels take 100 tonnes of fish fifish at a time, titime, and we are
running them every day. In 2004 the harvest station at Mallaig was built and this, coupled with the use of well boats, signalled a huge sea change in the way the company harvested its fish. Moving forwards, we have just contracted another new well boat, which is due at the beginning of next year’, he continues. ‘Built by Intership Ltd, the state-of-the-art Inter Caledonia will be double the size of the vessels we are currently using, with a harvest volume of around 200 tonnes.’
At that point, McColl continued in a planning role, looking at when to harvest the fish across all of its sites by matching sales demand and customer orders, as well as looking after the harvest station and the processing plant. ‘I was effectively responsible for the whole supply chain, from planning the harvests through to delivery to the customer’, he says. ‘We started using spreadsheets – which were cutting edge at the time. We were using large computers; you’d type in a plan and then go and get a cup of tea whilst the computer made the calculatition,’ tion,’ he laughs.
In terms of transportation, the company quickly outgrew its own fleet of trucks. ‘Initially we hired larger, flatbed lorries for the bins’, he explains. ‘From 2003 we would unload the well boats on to road tankers, each carrying around
20 tonnes of fish. Transporting the fish this way cut out a lot of extra handling and reduced the stress on the fish, which was better for both the welfare of the fish and the quality of the product.’
As Processing and Logistics Manager, McColl is also responsible for the processing factory at Blar Mhor, which had only just been opened when he joined the company. ‘The plant was based on a design from chicken processing’, he explains. ‘It has evolved over the years; it’s a bit bigger and the equipment has evolved, making it a little less labour intensive than it was. In fact, automation has been the key to coping with the increase in volume – Blar Mhor was designed with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes a year – we now do more than that in a month. We also process all year round, with quiet and busy spells, although the quiet spells are getting less and less; it’s been a long time since we’ve had a break of more than a few days.’
Currently, the factory at Blar Mhor is producing whole, gutted fish, although there was some added-value done there in the past. ‘We used the area in the factory designated for value-added processing to expand our primary processing’, McColl explains. ‘One of our main challenges was staffing, although that is not an issue now. The workforce comprises a mix of locals and eastern Europeans, some of whom are celebrating ten years in the company. The challenges going forward are mainly to do with processing capacity – we are running the factory seven days a week, 12 hours a day, so we will need to expand again in the next few years.’
As well as the changes in harvesting and processing, McColl has also seen a number of other significant changes within Marine Harvest during his time with the company. ‘The main change is the scale of the business. When I first started the industry was still very young, and a lot of the early pioneers were still there’, he says. ‘The skill set required to be a pioneer is very different to those required in a mature industry. Now we are better organised and better trained. The industry is also better regulated, heavily audited and there are procedures for everything. This entails a lot of hard work, but it has become part of what we do, and it keeps things transparent and honest, which is not a bad thing.’
McColl has thoroughly enjoyed his time with Marine Harvest, ‘it’s a great company to work for’, he says. ‘It’s been a pleasure working in what is an exciting industry; there’s never a dull moment and the people are good. I arrived at a pretty turbulent period for the industry, and been through a lot of difficult times – so it’s great to still be here when things are looking so good, everyone is upbeat and when confidence about the future is so high.’
It’s great to still be in the industry when things
are looking so good”