Young’s Seafood has announced a raft of redundancies at a former Border Laird site in Amble following revelations about quality issues with fishcakes produced at the site.

The company said it discovered “serious product quality issues” earlier this year, and had therefore decided to transfer production of fishcakes to its Grimsby factory.

The company’s chief operating officer, Pete Ward, said the decision to transfer production had not been taken lightly and added the Border Laird team had put a lot of effort into exploring how the quality issues could be resolved. However, he stressed, “we have to have a sustainable plan to service the fishcake customer contracts.”

Fishcake production moved to Grimsby at the end of February. As a result of the transfer, 31 employees will be made redundant. Young’s will continue to consult on the future of the site, which also handles langoustines.

Young’s parent, Lion Capital, bought Cumbrian Seafoods and Border Laird out of administration in December.

The fishcakes issue discovered by Young’s is the latest evidence of anomalies in the supply of fish by Cumbrian Seafoods and Border Laird. In February, it emerged that Asda had withdrawn two prawn lines after Young’s said it could not be certain the prawns contained in the products met best aquaculture standards. Last year, basa lines from Cumbrian were pulled from Asda and Morrisons after the product failed customer audits.

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