Scottish Shellfish Farm Production Survey 2013
This report is based on the returns of an annual survey questionnaire sent to all active authorised shellfish farming businesses in Scotland.
This document is part of a collection
Sites and Businesses
The numbers of authorised, active businesses and sites in operation are presented in Tables 3 and 4. Many sites held stock not yet ready for market, others were fallow, and some were positioned in remote areas where cost-effective production and marketing of shellfish proved difficult.
Historically, production data have been collected by business. However, since 2002, data have been collected for both business and site, enabling the provision of more accurate site information. In 2013, 158 sites produced shellfish for sale, a decrease of 3% since 2012.
TABLE 3 Authorised and active businesses 2004-2013.
| Number of Businesses | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | |
| Active | 175 | 183 | 173 | 170 | 168 | 168 | 164 | 153 | 153 | 142 |
TABLE 4 Active and producing farm sites by region 2013.
| Region | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highland | Orkney | Shetland | Strathclyde | Western Isles | All Scotland | |
| Sites | ||||||
| Active | 71 | 6 | 120 | 82 | 49 | 328 |
| Producing | 27 | 2 | 71 | 39 | 19 | 158 |
Active = Farms in a production growing cycle which may contain stock or be fallow.
Producing = placing on the market for the table and on-growing
NB: A business may produce more than one species and in more than one area.
FIGURE 2 Regional distribution of active shellfish sites in 2013 (number producing given in brackets) and number of producing businesses by area/species.
Eight Several Orders remain in place for scallop fisheries (see Fig. 2). Five of these Orders are in the Highland region, two in Strathclyde and one in Shetland.
Table 5 depicts the number of businesses by region and by species: A) in table production, B) in on-growing production and C) showing no production. Many businesses cultivate more than one species on site, a practice made possible by similar cultivation techniques. For example, scallop can be grown together with queen, Pacific oyster with native oyster, and mussel with Pacific oyster.
TABLE 5 Number of businesses by region and by species 2013.
a) Production for the table
| Region | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highland | Orkney | Shetland | Strathclyde | Western Isles | All Scotland | |
| Pacific oyster | 4 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 2 | 28 |
| Native oyster | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Scallop | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Queen | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Mussel | 8 | 0 | 19 | 6 | 6 | 39 |
| Total | 17 | 0 | 19 | 31 | 8 | 75 |
b) Production for on-growing to other producers
| Region | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highland | Orkney | Shetland | Strathclyde | Western Isles | All Scotland | |
| Pacific oyster | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 9 |
| Native oyster | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Scallop | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Queen | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mussel | 1 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 12 |
| Total | 7 | 0 | 9 | 9 | 2 | 27 |
c) No production, actively on-growing or fallow
| Region | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highland | Orkney | Shetland | Strathclyde | Western Isles | All Scotland | |
| Pacific oyster | 7 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 5 | 18 |
| Native oyster | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Scallop | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 9 |
| Queen | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Mussel | 15 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 37 |
| Total | 31 | 3 | 6 | 18 | 14 | 72 |
TABLE 6 Business production levels by species 2013.
| Species | 1- 10 | 11- 20 | 21- 30 | 31- 40 | 41- 50 | 51- 60 | 61- 70 | 71- 80 | 81- 90 | 91- 100 | 101-200 | >200 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific oyster (000s) | 12 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 28 |
| Native oyster (000s) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Scallop (000s) | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Queen (000s) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Mussel (tonnes) | 3 | 3 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 10 | 39 |
| Total | 20 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 9 | 13 | 75 |
Business production levels by species are shown in Table 6. There were 15 businesses producing more than 100 tonnes of mussels, a decrease of one business since 2012. Out of these 15 companies, ten produced more than 200 tonnes. These ten companies produced 74% of the total mussel production in Scotland. There were two businesses that produced more than 200,000 Pacific oysters. The production from these businesses accounted for 33% of the Scottish total.
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