Seafood staff facing redundancies

The 200-year-old company is a major employer in the area

Young's Seafood is consulting with unions over plans to upgrade its plant at Grimsby, with up to 49 redundancies.

The company said it would spend £1.5m on modernising the Humberstone Road factory and hopes to redeploy the redundant staff elsewhere in the area.

It also said it would mothball 40% of the site pending an upturn in trading.

Young's employs 725 people at the factory, which it said it wanted to make "fit for purpose". It has begun a 30-day consultation period with unions.

Operations director Steve Lidgett said he was optimistic about the future of the business.

'Below capacity'

He said the Young's brands were standing up well to the recession but the own-label area of production was performing less well.

He went on: "Parts of our Humberstone Road factory are currently working well below capacity.

"This is clearly unsustainable and given the current economic climate, and to secure its long-term future, we must invest to ensure it is competitive and cost-effective.

"This means reducing volumes, condensing and refurbishing the factory and investing in new technology to build our capabilities in new product lines.

"The site will be condensed to occupy around 60% of its current operational space, with the remainder mothballed until we have a business opportunity to reopen these parts of the site."

The North Lincolnshire-based seafood firm was bought out by private equity company Lion Capital in July 2008.