Mull-based ethical seafood company ceases trading
- Published
The Ethical Shellfish Company operated for 12 years
A Scottish seafood firm has gone out of business, citing Covid, Brexit and a decline in shellfish stocks as reasons for its closure.
The announcement was made by Isle of Mull-based The Ethical Shellfish Company in a newsletter to customers, external.
It said it had faced "real challenges which, when combined with the events of the past few years, have in the end defeated us".
The small firm started offering ethically-sourced seafood 12 years ago.
Its products included creel-caught lobster, brown crab and langoustine, as well as hand-dived king scallops, oysters and mussels.
In announcing that it was shutting down, the company said it had been a "very difficult decision which has caused us considerable anxiety and heartache".
The company's products included creel-caught Scottish lobster
It stated that the pandemic had "spelled the beginning of the end", with lockdowns resulting in the loss of its restaurant market overnight.
"More serious still, and as a direct consequence of Covid, was the loss of our boats, which we had to sell to keep us afloat during this period," the company said.
It also pointed to Brexit, saying several of its operations on the west coast of Scotland had been hit by the departure of European crew.
Other reasons given included the "explosive" growth of holiday accommodation following Covid, which it said made it an even bigger challenge to find staff.
'Deterioration in weather'
It added: "We tried to find people to work for us on Mull but with nowhere to stay, it is nigh-on impossible to attract people to move there.
"The scourge of second homes means that houses stand empty for months waiting to be populated by holiday makers in the summer.
"It felt like the final insult when in the end we were asked to leave our business premises so that it could be turned into - you guessed it - yet another holiday home."
The company also reported that it had seen a "definite deterioration in the weather" over the past 12 years, with "increasingly strong winds making fishing impossible for long stretches through the winter months".
It added: "We have no doubt this is the effect of global warming.
"There is also a general decline in shellfish stocks which is in no small part the result of poor fisheries management, with damaging fishing methods such as scallop dredging and trawling allowed to continue in 95% of our waters, decimating our inshore fisheries."