How one buccaneering family dominated the UK scampi market
"At the tender age of 32, I got involved in buying assets from the receivership of what was the Whitby Shellfish Company”, says Graham Whittle, founder of Whitby Seafoods.
From relatively humble beginnings, in just over thirty years, the business has gone from one that was sinking to the biggest producer of scampi in the UK, employing over 300 people – and all the while remaining privately-owned and family run.
“Whitby is a bit of a Mecca for seafood,” says Whittle. “We felt it represented a place that proper seafood came from… the aroma of the sea breeze, the seagulls… people travel from all over the place to come to Whitby for a walk along the beach, and to eat our fish and chips.”
Whittle’s background was “partly in food technology, and food marketing”. When he began the business in 1985, families were starting to eat out more often, the mid-eighties spending boom was in full swing, and Whittle was there to reap the benefits. “A lot of pubs were going through changes back then, from being drinking houses to destinations where you’d take your family for a meal – and seafood was a particularly important part of that.”
“That was how we started it”, he says, “making breaded scampi for wholesalers. As time went on the pub groups got larger, so we cut out the middleman and started negotiations with them directly”.
Today, the brand is listed in every major supermarket and distributes an own-brand version for Aldi and Lidl.
Whitby Seafoods is still family owned and run (Graham is far right) (Source: Whitby Seafoods)
Rebrand
As the company expanded, the Whitby brand needed to stay fresh. It originally planned to do so through simply redesigning its packaging. “The local design agency that we used changed hands, and the star of their team left. We were unhappy and needed to find an alternative, so we looked about at various medium-sized design agencies.”
After searching, the firm still wasn’t satisfied with what regional agencies had to offer, so bit the bullet and pitched to Big Fish in Chelsea, which has rebranded high-end food brands from Dorset Cereals to Clipper Tea.
“They’d never done a frozen food brand before, says Whittle, “and, although we didn’t ask for it, we got a complete rebrand. It cost a quarter of our annual profit, but we’re extremely please. Not only did it improve our packaging, it also lifted the image of the company. I think the way our employees, dealers and suppliers perceive our brand has changed. It was a gamble, but Big Fish delivered.”
Acquisitions
In competition with major brands such as Young’s and Birds Eye, Whitby wanted to expand its market share, and did so through a series of acquisitions of smaller seafood brands in Northern Ireland, and most recently Scotland.
Originally, Whitby had been using 14 separate manufacturers, but now tries to keep everything in house, as a way of maintaining supply capacity. “We were dealing with customers with far greater buying power than we had vendor power”, says Whittle.
But vendor power doesn’t seem to be a problem now. The latest acquisition of scampi stock, some machinery and the rights the Kintyre brand from Dawnfresh, based near Glasgow, was subject to an inquiry by the competition and markets authority (CMA), which considered Whitby’s position as the largest scampi supplier as potentially domineering the market.
After weeks of deliberation, it was agreed that Whitby still had ample competition from other manufacturers, so the merger went ahead. Throughout its three sites across the UK and Northern Ireland, Whitby produces some 8,000 tonnes of scampi per year, and until the Dawnfresh merger, turned over £41m a year. “With the acquisition of Dawnfresh’s scampi business, this year’s turnover will be just over £50m", says Whittle.
“Fisherman in North Shields with langoustine landings. All Whitby Seafoods Scampi is produced in Whitby” (Source: Whitby Seafoods)
Sustainability
Sustainable fishing is central to Whitby’s ethics – all its scampi is sourced from waters around the UK, and some of it is caught by skippers operating out of Whitby. Scampi stocks around the British Isles are currently very healthy, due in part to EU fishing quotas.
“When I first started, there were no fishing quotas on scampi but later, quotas were imposed, seemingly without any reason. The fish had been sustainable for decades, and they started constantly adjusting the quota – not for conservation, but for the potential impact on cod.”
The business learnt to adapt, and now Whittle welcomes the quotas: “as a company, we’re very much in favour of gathering evidence and working on an international basis to harvest the sea, and not over exploit it. The Common Fishing Policy was the mechanism which did that while we were in Europe, and as we leave there will have to be some other control to ensure fishing is sustainable,” he says.
Asked whether Brexit, and the subsequent drop in the value of sterling, has impacted business at all, Whittle says yes, but no more than for his competitors. “We export only a small amount: it won’t make a big difference. But we import quite a bit: we buy cod, squid, prawns, and they’re all in dollars. That’s going to have a significant impact, but it’s an impact that will affect all of our competitors, so across the industry it’s pretty much neutral.”
After three decades at the helm, Whittle stepped down last year into a more informal role, where he still “steers the ship” alongside his youngest son Daniel, who is Whitby’s managing director, and his other two children, Laura and Edward. After a few years future-proofing the business, Whitby is now consolidating and integrating its newest acquisition – and looking to the future.