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A former pallet yard is rapidly being overhauled to become the new base for two expanding business.
Carrera Engineering and Regal Fish Supplies Ltd have bought the former Crofton site in Grimsby’s Stirling Street.
It represents major opportunities for both firms, with Carrera taking the existing offices and workshops, which have been extensively refurbished and Regal now beginning a major project to install new wet fish handling facilities and a separate cold store.
Wayne Pratten said it is a major move for Carrera, with the premises six times the size of the former Birchin Way base.
Five more people have been taken on, with a £40,000 investment in new machinery for the sheet metal specialists.
At Regal Fish Supplies, a company which delivers pre-sold seafood to the doors of customers nationwide, it is a move from a premise in Murray Street, part of the neighbouring Grimsby Fish Docks, to enable it to cope with the volumes it now handles more efficiently, while setting itself up for further growth.
Mike Brummitt, general manager said “We will be our own masters, we will be able to cater for our needs and there will be other benefits as well”.
The original palette store is being transformed into a cold store, with a second building in the process of being converted into the wet factory and offices.
“What we do is very manual. We buy a lot of pre-filleted fish, which we then process as we work to our own specifications and we then pack it up. It is all good old-fashioned hand crafted stuff. The only mechanical equipment we have is the skinning machine, everything else if man-draulic! This will give us more space, with a much better layout so we can improve efficiencies and make everything easier. The new units will give us the ability to increase our product range and product holding, so we can offer the customer a better service and branch out into other things as well as grow over the next few years”.
Grimsby firm QA Construction are on site, with handover anticipated in September. It comes as Regal Fish is in the process of buying the Barton call centre and administration base.
Formerly the HR centre for Bakkavor in the town, an extension is being added to house training and meeting rooms as well as increasing the office space and the size of the kitchen used for product tasting.
The company, established in 1989 moved there after a fire at a neighbouring restaurant devastated the High Street premises in November 2009.
Featured in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph on June 21st 2011
