£1.6 million funding boost for seafood trader – Fishupdate.com

£1.6 million funding boost for seafood trader Published:  09 February, 2010

A LEADING Manchester seafood importer is set for further growth after a £1.6 million funding boost from the Co-operative Bank.

J.Sykes and Sons of Openshaw, which has been trading for around 150 years, will use the money as working capital and as a means of growing the business.

Managing director Martin Sykes told Fishupdate that he was delighted with the arrangement with its new bankers which was both an expression of faith in his company and in the seafood business in general, which was in good health especially in the middle range of the fish business.

The company was founded in 1862 in the original Manchester Smithfield Market in the centre of the old city, when deliveries of fish were made by horse and cart.The company relocated in 1974 to a large site one and a half miles outside the city centre in order to take advantage of the growth in frozen seafood and has seen several expansions since, the most recent of which was the opening of a state-of-the art office and coldstore building in 2005.

JD Sykes, which has an annual turnover of £45 million sources seafood from all over the world for onward distribution to restaurants, fried fish shops and other outlets throughout the UK . It supplies to food service, wholesale, retail, catering and fish frying businesses from a range of over 500 lines. It also deals in well known brands such as Royal Greenland, Young’s Seafoods, Whitby Seafood’s and Bantry Bay Seafoods.The cash injection from the Co-operative Bank will be used as working capital after Sykes invested in cold storage and office facilities and upgraded its transport fleet with new refrigerated lorries and vans. Stephen McKeag, corporate manager at the corporate banking centre of The Co-operative Bank in Manchester, said: “J. Sykes & Sons has a long established and successful history in Manchester and we’re delighted to secure its business.