PPS East rolls out Returnable Fish Box programme for Icelandic suppliers to Sealord – Fishupdate.com

PPS East rolls out Returnable Fish Box programme for Icelandic suppliers to Sealord Published:  02 December, 2011

PPS East, an established and well known returnable packaging rental company in Grimsby, has started providing plastic 15kg fillet boxes to Icelandic cod and haddock producers, who in turn supply to Sealord in Caistor.

Sealord is the key processor of white fish to major retailer Waitrose. With this new system, Sealord now receive their sea freight shipments of fresh fillets from Iceland in these durable plastic boxes. A proportion of these fillets are subsequently smoked at the Grimsby-based Keith Grahams.

The quality of the fish being delivered has improved when compared to the previous bulk packaging used, as the fillets are now packed into smaller volumes and ultimately, this has resulted in a cost saving to the customer.

PPS East recently appointed Reykjavik based Icebox Ehf as its agent and they place weekly orders with the company. In turn, they supply the PPS plastic 15kg fillet boxes to the Icelandic fish producers for subsequent sea freight to Grimsby.

Kate Williamson of PPS East said: “We have formed a close relationship with Sealord during the implementation of this and other projects. They are a very forward thinking business who want to maintain the greatest quality fish, plus they are very conscious to always try to reduce their waste packaging. We are using this as a springboard to grow this part of our business and have made trips to Iceland over the past few months, plus exhibited at the recent IceFish Seafood exhibition, where we made a number of new contacts.”

Keith Brown, managing director at Sealord, said: “We have enjoyed working with Kate and other members of the PPS East team to get this project underway. We have for some time wanted to look at alternative ways to keep our top quality fresh fillets protected throughout their delivery to us and with this returnable box system, we find ourselves gaining not only better results but also saving costs”.

Completing the whole packaging system, PPS East also supply high quality plastic pallets to carry these 15kg plastic boxes. Plastic pallets were chosen due to their hygienic properties for the intake into factory areas and are easily hygienically washed by PPS.

PPS East is currently working with a number of businesses in the fish and seafood sectors to look at opportunities to convert single-use packaging or bulk bins to returnable fish crates. The company has state-of-the-art industrial washing lines to clean all returned plastic boxes at a modern factory conveniently located to service local businesses. Although predominately involved in the fish and seafood sectors, it is now looking at opportunities to provide services connected to returnable transit packaging for other food sectors.

Sealord Caistor Ltd is the UK arm of Sealord New Zealand, which is a fish processing concern jointly owned by the Maori people (Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd) and the Japanese company Nippon Suisan.

The company has been established in the UK at its Lincolnshire site in Caistor (15 miles from Grimsby) since 1996 and has recently opened a new fish processing facility at its existing Caistor site. This has increased production of bread-coated fish products on two new lines for one of its main customers, the premier supermarket chain Waitrose.

Sealord Caistor began processing at its new $7m (£3.2m) plant in Lincolnshire in January 2007, employing an additional 40 personnel to bring the total workforce to 200. The plant was officially opened by the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt (The New Zealand High Commissioner to Britain) at the end of April 2007.