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Sykes Purchases Trading Assets Of The Big Prawn Co Limited

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The Big Prawn Co Limited is a UK-based business that specialises in manufacturing prawns and shellfish for the retail and foodservice sectors.

Sykes Seafood is a UK-based, privately-owned company, focused on providing customers with sustainably sourced quality seafood.

Together with Sykes Seafood, Klaas Puul and Ruskim creates a $550m pan European shrimp focussed seafood business that will offer a market-leading offering of seafood products across the Retail, Wholesale, Industry and Foodservice sectors. The combined businesses will operate 6 manufacturing sites across the UK, Europe, and Morocco as well as 10 distribution centres across UK and Europe employing over 4000 colleagues.

The Sykes and The Big Prawn Co business already share many synergies and similarities, and the combination will provide a solid backdrop for future growth and allow greater efficiencies in sourcing and an enhanced delivery platform to customers old and new.

Alan Dale, Group CEO at Sykes Seafood said:

“Big Prawn is a business we have long admired with its strong management team, efficient production facilities and innovative approach to product development. This is supported by strong company brands and sourcing offering a broad, quality focussed and sustainable product range to its customers.

Our focus will be to invest in increased capacity in the factory and build on its strong relationships with its customer and supplier base”

ENDS

Find out more information about Big Prawn Co

Inside The Factory At Tangier, Morocco

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No one knows prawns like us at Sykes Seafood, that’s why we are continually improving our processing capabilities to guarantee that we are producing only the best prawn products in the world.

 

Part of our investment involves the acquisition of Klaas Puul BV. For decades Klaas Puul has been one of the leading producers of prawn products in Europe and has its own hand-peeling facility in Morocco. With our operations being entirely in-house it means we have complete control over the supply chain. The state-of-the-art hand peeling facility in Tangier, Morocco has sufficient capacity for peak season to cover all peaks and troughs, meaning we are never out of stock. 

 

Hand Peeling

 

Our facility in Tangier employs 3,500 people and specialises in the hand peeling of North Sea brown shrimp. This large operation means we are able to produce 7000T of brown shrimp, cold water prawns and Argentinian red shrimp sold through Sykes/Klaas Puul. The facility has received a high level of ethical accreditation from BSCI and has a state-of-the-art design that is able to produce the highest quality prawns and shrimp you can obtain in the world. 

 

In everything we do, the quality of our products is our number one priority as well as the efficiency of supplying our top-rated products to our customers. Our continued investment in Morocco means we can offer our customers complete supply chain transparency as well as reduce the shipping times. 

 

New Developments

 

To add to the capabilities of the facility, a new freezer has recently been installed meaning we can now export both chilled and frozen products directly to Europe and the UK, offering our customers an even more diverse seafood selection to suit their needs.

 

We don’t like any waste here at Sykes Seafood. We are always coming up with new ideas to limit waste and help the impact we have on the planet. That is why we’ve constructed a brand new shell reprocessing facility adjacent to the factory.

 

Here we can repurpose the discarded prawn shells for the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Investments in Morocco don’t stop there. In Fnideq, a coastal port in Northeast Morocco, an hour from Tangier we are planning to expand our hand peeling operation.  Due to the high level of demand for our products, we require even greater quantities of prawns. 

 

Shorter supply chains, global sourcing, one of the world’s largest importers of shrimp, sustainable sourcing with full traceability / new employment opportunities to Morocco and boost the economic relationships between Morocco the UK and the EU.