Pentland Firth Orkney Waters Marine Spatial Plan: Value Added in the Fish Supply Chain in Orkney and Northern Highlands

Section 2: Buyer and Sellers in Orkney and Northern Highlands

A separate database was used to gather data on what species are supporting onshore fish businesses in the PFOW region and what is leaving the area. Data from the Registration of Buyers and Sellers Scheme ^[3] was used, which was introduced in 2005 and requires all buyers of seafood products to be registered and submit sales receipts. Data was classified by processors who buy fish and add value by conducting primary ^[4] or secondary ^[5] processing and merchants who buy and resell marine products without conducting any processing. Processors and merchants in the Northern Highlands bought £1.3m and £4.8m respectively of crustaceans and demersal species, whilst processors and merchants from Orkney purchased £4.8m, £26,000, and £446,000 of crustaceans, demersal and molluscs respectively ( Table 2). All other purchases were from outside the PFOW region with £10.9m going to other areas in Scotland, £2.5m to England and £6.9m are unknown.

Of the products purchased in the region, processors bought the majority - £4.2m in the Northern Highlands and £3.2m in Orkney - whilst merchants traded around £2m each in the Northern Highlands and Orkney ( table 2). This equates to 26.5% of landings into the PFOW region being utilised by Orkney and Highland based businesses.

Please note, data presented in Table 2 totals £31.7m worth of sales notes in 2011. £42.9m ( Table 1) was landed in the region in 2011 resulting in £11.2m unaccounted for, this we believe is due to direct sales for export which do not need to be registered under the current system.

Table 2: Value and volume of landing purchased by different buyers in 2011.

Note: £11.2 million worth of landings is unaccounted for due to direct sales overseas where no sales note is required.

Table 3 presents aggregated figures from Table 2 and details input (raw material) into onshore processors and merchants in Orkney and the Northern Highlands by species type which totals £6.1m for crustaceans, £4.9m for demersal and over £440,000 for molluscs. If we assume the proportions detailed in Table 1, where we estimate 35% of crustaceans, 5% of demersal species and 23.4% of molluscs purchased by Orkney and Northern Highland businesses come from PFOW-SA, then we estimate £2.5m of species entering onshore fish business comes from the PFOW-SA ( Table 3).

Table 3: Purchases by PFOW processors and merchants by species and proportion from inside PFOW

Lastly, to conclude this section of the analysis, Table 4 details the geographical spread of purchases throughout the region, which shows that the majority of purchases are direct i.e. by privately registered buyers, but that Scrabster sells a significant volume - £16m through the fish market - whilst Stromness sells a small proportion - £71,000 through their fish market.

Figure 11: Fish at fish market

Table 4: Value and volume of landings purchased from PFOW's 11 key ports

Note: £11.2 million worth of landings is unaccounted for due to direct sales overseas where no sales note is required.