Importing live lobsters into Heathrow Airport from Canada in the early 1990s immediately conjures up visions of a supply chain role feeding the City’s high flyers.
Twenty-five years on, and New England Seafood International is one within its own sector. It has just passed the £100 million turnover mark, and has shelled out on Grimsby’s Albert Darnell, itself a considerable operation on Europarc.
It is a remarkable growth story at odds with the seafood cluster it has bought into, having purposefully avoided the big five species as it grew with a focus on slightly more adventurous tastes.
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At the helm is Dan Aherne, who is at pains to explain that it was space, rather than business, the firm was originally seeking, before finding a synergy that looks great for Grimsby.
“We are mainly an importer of global species of fish, based down in Chessington, Surrey,” he said. “We started in Wandsworth, near Heathrow Airport, and we still do fly fish in. We now also import a lot high quality frozen and super frozen tuna and wild salmon by sea.
“In 1991, when it began, it was the founder, Fred (Stroyan), and a driver delivering to restaurants, and it built from there. We were the first people to import fresh tuna in 1993, and we started to build business with the supermarkets.
“Today we are not in the big five fish species, but we have high market shares of other species – tuna, sea bass, sea bream – which have been growing steadily over the last 25 years.
Landlocked on an industrial estate, opportunities were stifling, with expansive dual sites bursting at the seams close to the A3, nine miles south east of Britain’s biggest airport. Joii Sushi, a division serving the raw fish demands of the sticking restaurant trend has also fed the demand.
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“We needed additional capacity,” Mr Aherne said. “We started to search for ways to grow the business. We looked at a number of locations and ideas from wholesale relocation to building a new site. We went on our travels to work out the right thing to do.”
So how did he find Grimsby? No stranger to the town, the man with a strong blue chip background joined New England in 2003, having previously worked for Birds Eye. He also uses cold storage here. “I have been a number of times to Grimsby and really got to know some of the people,” he said. “There is a great passion in the blood.
“I reached out to Mike and Albert Darnell having heard about the positive move he had made to Europarc from the North Wall.
“I understood his ambition to do more, to make the best of the team and his ambition to be in retail, and we thought we could help each other. He had space, land at the back that we were able to secure. He also has the bones of a really strong team, and great filleting capability. We didn’t set out to buy a cod and haddock business, but we wanted to generate space for other operations.”
These differences now complement each other. “This is an exciting new chapter for the group and we look forward to working with and learning from our new colleagues at Albert Darnell,” he added, “hopefully we can be a positive story and a force for good.”
It also killed two birds with one stone.
“To do what we needed to do, we needed a great space and a great team,” Mr Aherne said. “You can create a new white-walled factory from scratch, but it takes longer to find a team. Finding people to effectively work in a fridge for a shift is hard work, to this was a great solution for us.”
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Looking to the future, with Albert Darnell now in the stable, he said the number one priority was to ensure existing relationships with customers were running successfully, before physical expansion commences.
“While I cannot say when, we will build when it is right,” he said. “There is room in the existing facility for the first phase, but we have got to be planning ahead.
“This acquisition supports the firm belief that we have in the future of the fish category in the 海角视频. The uncertain post Brexit environment does make life more challenging and creates uncertainty, especially around the moving cost base. However, when we consider the fundamentals of the category and the fact that consumers are, on average buying fish every 20 days from the supermarkets when Government advice recommends eating fish twice a week, it is clear there remains a massive job to be done.
“This requires us to make the choice an emotionally and practically engaging one and New England is prepared to take on that challenge. Like most food, fish has become more expensive in recent months on the back of weaker sterling, but a pack of sea bass is in many places still cheaper to buy than a pint of beer so it is more than accessible. Our job is to create that desire.”
And we’ll all drink to that...
- This article has been re-published from the archives of Humberbusiness.com.