Salmon firm boss to leave after EWOS handover
(From The Orcadian dated November 30, 2000)

The managing director of the Orkney Salmon Company Ms Kirsty McCallum, is to leave her job.

She will vacate her position after a three-month handover period working with the new management team from Norwegian fish feed company EWOS, who have bought over Mainland Salmon and their 70 per cent shareholding in Orkney Salmon, along with the Aquascot Group.

Ms McCallum said that she had been offered “a very lucrative three-year contract with the new company”, but that she had “opted to turn down the offer for personal reasons.”

She added that she had had several days of useful meetings with the new management team, and remarked: “I can see nothing but good coming from this deal. The factory will be a great deal busier than it has been and marketing will be boosted by the contact with multiple retailers. There will be many, many benefits from it.”

Ms McCallum was quick to deny that the takeover by a Norwegian conglomerate would change the type of processing done at the factory or that it would result in the loss of work on some prestigious contracts to factories in the south.

“Rumours of that kind are not at all helpful, and have been made by people who obviously do not know the first thing about what we do here,” she added.

However Ms McCallum’s confidence in the future is not shared by environmental groups like Friends of the Earth (FOE) Scotland.

Their fish farming researcher Mr Don Staniford, is concerned that Orkney’s reputation for quality salmon produced in small scale farms will be lost in the wider drive to increase production.

He said this week: “The wholesale takeover of Orkney salmon farmers by Norwegian multinationals intent on maximising production and profits at the expense of local jobs and Orkney’s pristine environment, will only serve to reinforce a polluting picture.

“Orkney’s hard-earned image as a small scale quality producer of organic salmon lies by the wayside – quite literally, with the spillage of 2,500 dead fish in Orphir. Aquascot, in particular, have left a trail of bad debts and lasting pollution which will be difficult for EWOS/ Statkorn to shake off.”

Earlier this year, in a letter to Friends of the Earth, Ms McCallum herself expressed concern that Aquascot had been accepted by the Soil Association as a producer of organic salmon, because of their working practices, disease record, equipment failures and escapee record.