Hilton Food looks set to cut jobs at the UK-based private-label supplier’s Seachill business on the east coast of England.
Located in the port town of Grimsby, Seachill processes fresh fish and coated fish products. The plant is about to undergo unspecified organisational changes, which will lead to an undisclosed number of redundancies.
A spokesperson for Seachill said in a statement provided to Just Food: “As a business, we continue to focus on making improvements at Seachill and ensuring the long-term sustainability of our seafood business.
“As part of this, we are proposing changes to our organisational structure at Seachill’s Grimsby site, which, regrettably, if implemented could result in a number of redundancies.”
A source familiar with the proceedings told Just Food that around 90 jobs could go at the Grimsby plant out of a total of about 1,000 staff at the site, including production and office workers.
Consultations with affected employees began at the end of last week and are expected to wrap up before the year concludes amid what is understood to be a challenging local seafood market as inflationary pressures build.
“We recognise that this is difficult news for our colleagues. Our focus now is on supporting all those affected as we enter into a genuine consultation process and considering all feedback before any final decisions are made,” the spokesperson said.
“We will explore suitable alternative roles wherever these are available.”
Outlining Hilton Food’s first-half financial performance in September, CEO Mark Allen said “improvements” at the Seachill business will start to bear fruit in the second half of the year.
Allen’s predecessor Steve Murrells had launched a review of Hilton Food’s business set up, a process that concluded in March with a plan to focus on the London-listed company’s “core” meat and fresh prepared foods operations.
Allen revealed the conclusion of the review in March, noting the company wanted to “increase strategic optionality” for Hilton’s seafood and plant-based assets.
That was before the sale of Dalco, the vegan and vegetarian business in the Netherlands, was announced in July.
Hilton has also faced challenges elsewhere, namely the Netherlands-headquartered Foppen salmon business amid restrictions imposed by the US Food and Drug Administration on exports.
A further £7m ($9.2m today) in “exceptional charges” related to Foppen was booked in the first half to 28 June as seafood sales weighed on group margins, Hilton reported in September.
Discussing those numbers last month, Allen said: “While performance in Foppen has been disappointing, we are beginning to see the positive impact of our improvement plans at Seachill. The agreed sale of Dalco is a step towards simplifying our portfolio.”
He said the improvements initiated at Seachill “can’t be seen in the numbers yet but we expect to see the impact starting to come through in half two”.
Talking about Seachill specifically, the CEO said: “We’re slightly further ahead than we are in Foppen and we’re already starting to see the benefits of that in the numbers. I suspect if I’m talking to you at the year end, I’ll be talking quite positively around the changes that we’ve made to that business.”
