MARITIME LOGISTICS
Seafood Firm Wins Praise For ‘Brilliant’ Thailand Strategy
Young’s Seafood took a bit of a bashing when it announced in November that it was going to switch from machine-shelling of its Scottish langoustine on home territory to manual-shelling of them in Thailand.
The main reasons for the criticism were that the move will mean the loss of 120 jobs in Scotland, and an extra 20,000 kilometres for the seafood to travel.
Young’s will still catch the seafood in Scottish waters and freeze it, but it will then transport the produce by container ship to Thailand for hand-peeling by workers there. The peeled langoustine will then return by container ship to Scotland for processing, packaging and distribution.
Environmental groups have been particularly outspoken in their opposition, with Friends of the Earth in Scotland saying what Young’s proposes to do (from next February) was “environmental madness”.
The same organisation then called for Young’s deputy chief executive, Mike Parker, to resign from the board of a sustainability group called the Maritime Stewardship Council.
Young’s is involved in research projects, in partnership with the University of Glasgow, into conservation and responsible fishing of langoustine and has reiterated its commitment to the Scottish seafood industry, but the green campaign group’s local chief executive, Duncan McLaren, said: “A business executive who tries to excuse such an inexcusable decision [the Thailand decision] would not seem to me to be well placed to help the Maritime Stewardship Council judge what is sustainable seafood.”
The company admitted to the Global Institute of Logistics that it had expected to receive criticism over the loss of jobs in Scotland, but that the environmental row had taken it by surprise.
Now an academic who is a leading expert in maritime logistics has spoken out in support of Young’s, describing the company’s decision to use container ships to move seafood between Scotland and Thailand as “brilliant”.
Dr Jean-Paul Rodrigue, an associate professor in the department of economics and geography at Hofstra University in New York, has told the Global Institute of Logistics that criticism of Young’s is misguided.
“The environmental community has a limited understanding of modern distribution,” Dr Rodrigue says, adding that many of the arguments critics have put forward are “rather naïve” and are intended to shock the public.
He continues: “I must say that the strategy of Young’s Seafood is brilliant. They are likely to increase the quality of their products while reducing costs. They will take advantage of the low container freight-rates from Europe to Asia, which are twice as cheap as from Asia to Europe because of the trade imbalances.”
Because these container ships would be making their journeys to Asia anyway, whether fully loaded or not, he says the containers carrying the Young’s langoustine will be “hitching an environmental impact-free ride”.
On the more expensive return journey, he makes the point (obvious when you think about it) that Young’s will benefit from the smaller space that the de-shelled langoustine will take up. Yes, the journey takes three weeks, but this is time that the langoustine must spend in cold storage anyway as part of the maturation process.
Until now, the company has had to pay for temperature-controlled warehousing space for this. From February, it will happen on the ship during the voyage. Dr Rodrigue describes this as “a unique added advantage” Young’s will achieve from its change in strategy.
And as larger, more fuel-efficient container ships take to the oceans of the world, a strategy such as Young’s will make even more environmental sense, the academic claims.
At the same time, as real estate and infrastructure prices increase, this combined storage and shipment of products will seem like an even better idea.
He argues: “ The UK is currently pricing itself out of the global economy with a gigantic asset inflation, notably in real estate, mostly the outcome of reckless credit creation by central banks. Companies are struggling to minimise their real estate imprint and will use logistics are a mean to do so.”