FDBusiness.com

Seafish, the public body supporting the UK seafood industry, has launched its Corporate Plan 2023-2028. This strategic roadmap reflects the organisation’s vision for a thriving seafood sector and its ambition to drive the industry forward and foster sustainability, resilience, and prosperity.

The 2023-2028 Corporate Plan was developed following a Strategic Review of Seafish that involved extensive consultation and collaboration with government and stakeholders from the seafood industry across the UK. That process has shaped the priorities outlined in Seafish’s new 5-year plan, ensuring it directly addresses the needs of industry.

“Our new Corporate Plan demonstrates our ongoing commitment to support the UK seafood industry,” said Marcus Coleman, CEO at Seafish. “Consultation with industry and government stakeholders has been instrumental in shaping our new priorities. By working together, we can ensure that our initiatives are directly informed by the aspirations of the seafood industry.”

The new strategy aims to provide the support industry needs to address current challenges, such as labour shortages, the climate emergency, post Brexit trade as well as reputational challenges the sector faces. These events have a direct impact on all seafood businesses and will influence industry’s performance over the next five years and beyond.

The Seafish Corporate Plan 2023-2028 details seven key priorities that shape the organisation’s strategic efforts over the next five years.

These priorities are:

1. Ensuring a safe and skilled workforce. Seafish wants the UK seafood sector recognised as a dynamic, safe, and attractive sector to work. It also wants to ensure individual businesses have the systems and processes in place to source the labour they need and to provide safe workplaces for all.
2. Facilitating and promoting international trade. Seafish wants to support businesses to achieve frictionless seafood trade with suppliers and markets across the world.
3. Responding to the climate change emergency. Over the next five years, Seafish will work to firmly place the seafood sector on a clear path to achieve its emissions targets. Seafish also want to ensure businesses understand how they will need to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate on their daily operations.
4. Improving fisheries management. Seafish’s ambition is that over the next ten years all commercial fisheries will be managed via Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs). These will be supported by a robust evidence framework, and provide for genuine co-management between industry, government, and researchers.
5. Enabling supply chain resilience. Seafish aims to equip businesses to respond and adapt when issues emerge, highlighting where change is necessary and creating pre-competitive spaces for businesses to forge solutions and realise opportunities.
6. Improving data, insight, and innovation. Seafish’s ambition is to become the centre for analysis and insight on the operation and performance of the seafood supply chain. Seafish also wants to coordinate and target innovation investment to find solutions to the real issues facing seafood businesses.
7. Championing Industry Reputation. By actively scanning the landscape for reputational risks to proactively plan responses, Seafish aims to support the industry to tell a positive story about seafood.

“Our non-competitive position working across the supply chain and the UK is a fundamental strength that enables us to provide the support industry needs,” Marcus Coleman continued. “It helps us to work in close partnership with all parts of the sector, ensuring we are ready to address the challenges and opportunities an increasingly volatile and evolving landscape create.”

The Seafish Corporate Plan 2023-2028 has been turned into an interactive video allowing viewers to create playlists based on the information they are most interested in.

Visit the Seafish Corporate Plan 2023-2028 interactive video at www.seafish.org/corporate-plan.