Frozen food specialists ‘very upbeat ’ about future

The Press and Journal 29/07/2008

A SHIFT in public attitudes towards frozen food has helped one of the north-east’s biggest employers record a massive increase in sales.

Young’s Seafood said that UK consumers are finally coming round to the benefits of frozen fish, after seeing its sales soar 15% to £176million.

Last month, Prime Minister Gordon Brown revealed that families in the UK are throwing away 4.1million tonnes of perfectly good food every year, costing each around £420 annually.

Young’s managing director Jim Cane believes frozen fish is “perfectly poised” to meet the needs of families today.

“We’re very upbeat about the future of frozen,” he said.

“The market is showing consistent growth and the message is getting across about the intrinsic benefits of frozen as an entirely natural and sensible way to preserve the very best qualities of food.

“People are appreciating that frozen can be equally as good and natural as the chilled equivalent.”

Young’s employs about 3.000 people between Grimsby, where it has its headquarters, and Scotland.

The company’s premises in Fraserburgh is Young’s centre of excellence for smoked fish, and frozen products made there include smoked haddock, cod and coley fillets.

For the first time in recent memory, figures show that frozen fish sales have outpaced those of chilled.

Now worth a whopping £753m, frozen seafood is the biggest and most buoyant sector of the whole frozen category – currently growing at 5%.

Young’s says its sales increase is partly down to consumer’s reassessment of the frozen food sector as a whole – reversing the image that frozen gained in the 1970s and 80s as mainly a place to find budget, lower quality food.

Mr Cane added: “Frozen seafood is perfectly in tune with the consumer need for great food that is readily available, with less waste.

“The freezer is the perfect solution to preserving freshness and nutrition, particularly for ingredients people want to cook with like fish and vegetables.

“It’s also a better way to manage the supply chain from distant parts of the world – shipping frozen foods will become even more important in the future as air freight becomes less acceptable because of its environmental impact.”

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