Grant Thornton, the administrators, told that organic cod farming had been a financial disaster and had no realistic chance of succeeding. He had sold the firm’s fish- farming business to two Norwegian-owned companies, who will instead begin producing organic salmon in Shetland’s coastal waters. He states that the last supplies of cod was 3,400 tonnes, which would now be sold off at knock-down prices, less than a tenth of its original cost in the shops.
No Catch was accused of bloated expense accounts and luxurious lifestyles, which brought the much-hyped cod farming experiment to a dead and dozens of jobs slashed. It is said that at Scalloway fish market last week, No Catch cod was being sold whole as ordinary fish for less than the wild-caught Atlantic cod it was expected to replace.
Daniel Smith, the administrator, the firm’s owners had had “very ambitious” plans but organic cod was just too expensive to produce. He added that the consumer is not yet prepared to pay such a large premium for wild cod. Karol Rzepkowski, one of No Catch’s former directors, refused to comment on the disaster performance of the firm. He claimed that farming cod is viable as the demand for farmed cod is rising.
