Scottish shellfish farm production survey 2018

Sites and Businesses

The numbers of authorised, active businesses and sites in operation are presented in Tables 3 and 4. There are many sites that held stock not yet ready for market, others were fallow, and some were located 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 2018, 160 sites produced shellfish for sale, a decrease of 9% since 2017.

Table 3: Authorised and active businesses 2009-2018.

Table 4: Active and producing farm sites by region 2018.

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

Producing = Placing on the market for the table and/or on-growing.

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

Figure 2: Regional distribution of active shellfish sites in 2018 (number producing given in brackets) and number of producing businesses by region/species.

There were five Several Orders in place for scallop fisheries in 2018 (see Fig. 2 above) all of which are located in the Highland region. 

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 2018.

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 15 businesses producing more than 100 tonnes of mussels, a decrease of three businesses since 2017. Out of these 15 businesses, nine produced more than 200 tonnes. These nine businesses produced 74% of the total mussel production in Scotland. There were seven businesses that produced more than 200,000 Pacific oysters. The production from these businesses accounted for 84% of the Scottish Pacific oyster total.

Table 6: Business production levels by species 2018.