Marine Harvest open day attracts over 200 visitors

MH Scotland business development manager Steve Bracken said: "We were delighted with the turnout. From the time the doors opened at 2pm, until 7pm we were kept very busy, which was great. Most people arrived early, to find out about the jobs, but also to get an update on where we are with the construction.

"Because it is an active building site, we decided to take visitors around in a minibus, for those that wanted to do it. One of our team drove people around the site, pointing out what was happening where, and I think that was much appreciated by the people who wanted to take part in that trip.

"We had the jobs on offer up on boards, and leaflets of all the jobs that we have on offer, so people could take those away and have a think about them. And we also had boards that were showing progress on the site, and going back through some of the issues again: salmon feed, what's in it, where do the ingredients come from, why do we use them - all of that was there on display.

Career change

"The visitors that came were either interested in having an update on what was happening to the feed plant, others who were interested in working for us, looking at all the jobs, and there were some people who were thinking about either a career change, or moving back to the Skye and Lochalsh area.

"We were delighted with the turnout. We also had our products there for the eating; we had a local company prepare salmon snacks for us and they went down extremely well."

Bracken said recruiting the right staff could sometimes be difficult in the sparsely populated areas where the company operates.

Growth in tourism

"It's typical now to see, with the growth in tourism, that that industry is booming, and more and more it is becoming almost all-year round, and so it is difficult at times of the year to get people to come and work for us. And because many of these jobs [at the feed mill] are very specialised, we want to cast the net far and wide, but ideally we would love to employ local people in the feed plant when it's opened.

"That was the real benefit of yesterday, to get people to come in and have a look at what's on offer and talk to our human resources department, and speak to other people as well who are involved in our feed plant in Norway. We had two colleagues across from Norway especially for the information day."

MH Scotland is six months into the 18-month build of the £93 million feed plant, which will supply feed to Scotland, Ireland, Norway and the Faroes.

The feed mill will employ 55 people when it begins operation in the second half of 2018. It will have an annual capacity of 170,000 tonnes.