Sykes Seafood’s Shrimp production plant is announced as the first in Europe to achieve BAP accreditation from Global Aquaculture Alliance

Sykes Seafoods are extremely pleased to announce its Sefton Meadow production facility reaching BAP accreditation and so it becomes Europe’s first and only BAP approved Warm Water Shrimp production facility. This accreditation reinforces and strengthens the Sykes commitment to a sustainable supply chain.

The new Warm Water factory was commissioned towards the end of 2015 and increases the capacity of the whole site to 80 metric tons per day, complementing the existing Cold Water Prawn production line. The plant is currently processing raw IQF prawns for Sykes own foodservice, retail and manufacturing customers and will be adding cooked prawns to the range from the end of March.

Sykes Chairman Martin Sykes adds:

“It gives us all at Sykes and Sefton Meadow Seafoods a great sense of achievement to complete this latest improvement, control and expansion of our UK packing facility. Having been feted over the years for our cold water prawn processing, it was a logical progression to look to the rapidly growing Asian Prawn sector and bring a greater provenance and peace of mind to our Retail and Food Service customers, particularly those who place great value on higher ethical and environmental standards.”

The opening of the new facility and this latest accreditation coincide with important changes to Sykes sourcing capability at raw material source in the Far East and India whereby we will announce a significant joint venture to control the flow of raw material into the UK facilities. This will enable Sykes to source its raw material direct from Shrimp Farms, peeling and then freezing highly fresh material within 1-2 hours of harvest.

Sykes Managing Director Alan Dale notes:

“We are excited to announce a joint venture in India which allows us to supply day in day out highly fresh and just harvested, peeled and frozen shrimp in facilities controlled by our own UK technical teams, the ability to control and impart our own standards in our own facility in India is a game changer and complements our UK operations perfectly”.

The Sefton Meadow facility will open officially at the end of March 2016 and will be opened by Mike Berthet – Marketing Development Manager UK, for the Global Aquaculture Alliance.

“’As Marketing Development Manager UK, for the Global Aquaculture Alliance I am absolutely delighted and privileged, to have been invited to open Sykes new processing plant at Sefton Meadow. There are some occasions in our industry that mark considerably important milestones and I consider this to be one of them. To have had both the foresight and commitment to become the first certified Best Aquaculture Practice (BAP) processing plant in Europe is quite an achievement and Sykes should be justly proud. I look forward to seeing it become the benchmark for other processors of BAP products throughout Europe which enables ‘farm to customer’ security of BAP certified seafood” commented Mike Berthet.

Sykes will shortly announce further details of the official opening of the new site and its joint venture program in India.

More information about the BAP program and standards can be found here:

http://bap.gaalliance.org/bap-certification/why-certify-through-bap/

More information on Sykes production can be found here:

http://www.sykesseafoods.co.uk/company/our-production/

Enquiries regarding this statement of new facility can be directed to Dan Wright, Sykes Purchasing Director.

dan.wright@sykesseafoods.co.uk