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A change at the helm of one of Grimsby’s largest seafood firms has been completed.

Chris Hayes has been appointed managing director of the Hilton Foods Seafood º£½ÇÊÓƵ, following the departure of Andre van der Padt. He had taken on the role following the acquisition of the Dutch business he headed - Foppen - but left earlier this year, emerging as an associate partner in an Amsterdam-based equity house.

Having previously worked as a consultant to the wider Hilton business, and others, Mr Hayes has also served town rival Young’s Seafood, both as an interim site director at the Humberstone Road plant and at its Pinneys of Scotland site in Annan. Bakkavor, Greencore and Kerry Foods - where he was a graduate management trainee - are also on the CV.

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Mr Hayes will be supported by Dale Fawcett as finance director, Nic Hunter as head of seafood purchasing and strategic sourcing, and Rick Jenkinson as head of operations.

It comes as Steve Murrells CBE replaces Philip Heffer as a director of what was Seachill, following his appointment as Hilton Food Group chief executive last month. The former Co-op CEO had been meat category director at Tesco when Hilton emerged as a key supplier of red meat, well before it bought into the seafood sector with the 2017 acquisition of the Grimsby firm from Icelandic Group.

Mr Heffer, who opened an expansion to the South Humberside Industrial Estate base last year, will stay on as an advisor, having co-founded the business in 1994. It is now a FTSE-listed global operator.

Recent months have seen the closure of a fish smoking operation, also in Grimsby, as fortunes were turned round following a tough trading period with raw material inflation.