Financial Support paid to Scottish fish farming industry: EIR release

Information requested

Details of financial support by way of (i) grants and (ii) loans, paid to the Scottish fish farming industry by the Scottish Government or its agencies for 2018 and 2019, broken down by operator.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.
This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Funding for aquaculture businesses is available through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF), administered in Scotland by the Scottish Government. The EMFF awards are made to aquaculture businesses to support sustainable economic growth, and the payments in the time period you have asked for have been made to projects to improve staff health and safety, create jobs in rural areas, increase fish welfare, reduce water usage, and to increase shellfish production.
The information you requested is detailed in the table below, and all EMFF awards made to date are published online at: https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/grants-subsidies/awards/EMFFTransparency (with grants less than £25k only online for a limited time after announcement). More information on the scheme can be found at: https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp/emff_en.
 

	EMFF Grant payments to Scottish Fish Farms (£)
Project Ref	Company name	2018	2019	Total
SCO1246	Invicta Trout Ltd	0	2,152	2,152
SCO1275	Dawnfresh Seafoods Ltd	53,292	0	53,292
SCO1349	Wester Ross Fisheries Ltd	196,088	536,597	732,684
SCO1439	Vementry Aquaculture	121,765	10,020	131,786
SCO1765	Invicta Trout Ltd	3,335	0	3,335
SCO2092	Invicta Trout Ltd	0	1,517	1,517
SCO2098	Invicta Trout Ltd	0	913	913
SCO2171	Highland Salmon Company Ltd	0	33,436	33,436
SCO2297	Selcoth Fisheries Ltd	0	35,000	35,000
SCO2355	Dawnfresh Seafoods Limited	0	55,123	55,123
SCO2216	Kames Fish Farming Ltd	530,649	0	530,649
SCO2411	Selcoth Fisheries Ltd	41,765	0	41,765

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.