Scottish Shellfish Farm Production Survey: 2012 Report

Sites and Businesses

The numbers of authorised, active businesses and sites in operation are presented in Tables 3 and 4. Many sites held stock not yet ready for market, others were fallow, and some were positioned in remote areas where cost-effective production and marketing of shellfish proved difficult.

Historically, production data have been collected by business. However, since 2002, data have been collected for both business and site, enabling the provision of more accurate site information. In 2012, 163 sites produced shellfish for sale, an increase of 1% since 2011.

Table 3: Authorised and active businesses 2003-2012.

Table 4: Active and producing farm sites by region 2012.

Active = Farms in a production growing cycle which may contain stock or be fallow.

Producing = placing on the market for the table and on-growing

NB: A business may produce more than one species and in more than one area.

Figure 2: Regional distribution of active shellfish sites in 2012 (number producing given in brackets) and number of producing businesses by area/species.

Ten Several Orders remain in place for scallop fisheries, two of which include native oyster (Figure 2). Seven of these Orders are in the Highland region, two in Strathclyde and one in Shetland. The size of the Orders measure from 18m ² up to 31 ha.

Table 5 depicts the number of businesses by region and by species: A) in table production, B) in on-growing production and C) showing no production. Many businesses cultivate more than one species on site, a practice made possible by similar cultivation techniques. For example, scallop can be grown together with queen, Pacific oyster with native oyster, and mussel with Pacific oyster.

Table 5: Number of businesses by region and by species 2012.

a) Production for the table

b) Production for on-growing to other producers

c) No production, actively on-growing or fallow

Business production levels by species are shown in Table 6. There were 16 businesses producing more than 100 tonnes of mussels, an increase of one business since 2011. Out of these 16 companies, six produced more than 300 tonnes. These six companies produced 58% of the total mussel production in Scotland. There were two businesses that produced more than 300,000 Pacific oysters, this is two less than the 2011 total. The production of these two businesses' accounted for 35% of the Scottish total.

Table 6: Business production levels by species 2012.