Scottish Nephrops Working Group Report: Scottish Government response

1. Recovering markets

1.1. Segment and describe the existing market for Scottish nephrops (S-M)

1.2. Scottish nephrops-targeted marketing campaign in France, Italy, and Spain including retail in-store promotions (S-M)

1.3. Organise in-market visits including Meet the Buyer programmes for active fishermen and processors to key existing markets (S-M)

1.4. Financially-supported attendance at trade shows with bespoke nephrops activity (S-M)

1.5. Programme of learning journeys to Scotland for buyers, customers, and influencers (S-M)

1.6. Investigate feasibility of measures to better balance supply and demand (S-M)

1.7. Develop marketing collateral to promote premiumisation of Scottish nephrops to buyers and consumers (M-L)

Scottish Government response

We recognise the huge negative impact that Brexit had on the seafood sector. It is therefore of importance to support the fishing and onshore industries to grow sustainably, and build and maintain access to markets including near to home. Whilst many of the actions in this area will be for the industry themselves to take forward, through our management of Scotland's sea fisheries and the FFM Strategy we aim to put in place the right conditions to manage nephrops fishing in a sustainable and responsible way and ensure that consumers know that at the point of purchase. We will also work with the fishing industry to identify and support opportunities for diversification in the future.

We and our enterprise agencies are working intensively with many of our key seafood exporters to help them recover and rebuild their exports in Europe and other key markets. The joint industry and Scottish Government recovery plan to help the farming, fishing, food and drink sector recover from Brexit and COVID-19 includes a number of actions designed to stimulate demand in key markets, and help producers meet that demand. A number of these will benefit the nephrops sector, including those set out below.

• Funding two in-market specialist posts to deliver short term assistance to exporters dealing with the post-Brexit processes and routes to market.
• Providing £1m in funding to set up the Knowledge Bank, a collaborative research and market insight service free to access for all Scottish food and drink businesses which will play a pivotal role in helping Scottish food and drink businesses, of all sizes and across all sectors, use market insight and intelligence to help differentiate their offerings in the global marketplace.
• Facilitating new regional showcase trade events to bring together more suppliers and buyers to drive local sales, encouraging Scottish retailers to offer locally sourced seafood.
• Delivering a programme in partnership with key retailers and food service customers to increase listings of Scottish products in Scottish outlets.
• Facilitating a series of virtual meet the buyer events.
• Delivering a programme of in-market specialist webinars to understand the current market operating environment and emerging opportunities.
• Supporting new inwards missions of buyers to Scotland.
• Building a farming and fishing international engagement programme, taking producers directly to meet potential customers, with supply chain development support to exploit opportunities.
• Creating new posts inside buying teams of the major UK retailers and food service companies to broker more sourcing of Scottish produce.