By Fish Market to shut amid Covid-19 closures
Grimsby’s Fish Market and auction is to shut amid other Covid-19 related closures.
This in part due to the collapse in demand from fish and chip shops, which has meant that fishing is now a loss-maker. With restaurants ordered to close, takeaways are rapidly following suit, although not yet ordered to do so.
Icelanding supply has also been affected by cases of coronavirus in the Westman Islands, which is where much of the fishing takes place.
This update follows an announcement by North East Lincolnshire Council regarding the safe import and export of edible goods during the crisis, in which they stated that:
“Our intention is to continue service provision to maintain flow of goods through the port, support local economy and maintain regulatory control.”
The market, which was about to drop to three days a week, will now be suspending sales after Thursday.
Martyn Boyers, Chief Executive of Operations at Grimsby Fish Dock Enterprises, said:
“The auction was quite strong yesterday (Monday), but due to the impact of isolation, prior to the speech from Boris Johnson, we were minded to go to a three-day week which seemed reasonable.
Today (Tuesday) it collapsed, and it is not in anyone’s interest to continue.
There is no point in catching and not getting a reasonable price.”
Simon Dwyer, Secretariat for the Grimsby Fish Merchants’ Association, added:
“Fish and chip shops are closing across the country, and this is going to temporarily have a severe impact on some of the small and medium size processors, processing fresh fish in Grimsby.
A lot are to close down on Friday and they will be looking to make use of the 80 per cent salary grant. That could be anything up to 200 people.. There has just been a total lack of demand in that sector for fresh fish.
There is tonnes of fish around, but we can’t – at the moment – find the right channels to get it to the consumer.”
He said that, as people adhere to government advice on social distancing, the only thing bucking the trend is the demand for home delivery.
In this unprecedented situation, it is unclear how long restaurants and takeaways will be closed for, and therefore, how long the collapse in demand for fresh fish will last.
What might this mean for the immediate future of England’s largest fish market, which is still recovering from three successive storms which have affected supply?
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