Fish business growing

Press, 4 May 1988, Page 4

Fish business growing

By

RICHARD CRESSWELL,

industrial reporter

In these difficult economic times one Christchurch company is going from strength to strength and has been increasing staff steadily in the last year.

Independent Fisheries started as a fish and chip shop in Worcester Street in 1950 and now employs 190 people. The company is owned by Mr Howard Shadbolt, who started the shop, and his son Charles, running two vessels from Lyttelton and six joint-venture trawlers in season.

Now the fish and chip shop is a massage parlour and the family business is taking up workers from other companies who have been laying off staff, such as Amalgamated Batteries, Skellerup Industries, and Lane, Walker,

Rudkin.' ,Mr Shadbolt said his success hinged on good employee relations, using up the product for further processing, and knowing what fish to catch. The Messrs Shadbolt tour the factory every morning to check up and greet the workers. “I know most by their first name and they all have names on their coats — it is an important attention to detail,” said Mr Howard Shadbolt. ' "We don’t stand on ceremony here,” said Mr Bill Bowers, the company personnel manager.

Mr Howard Shadbolt is reputed to be one of the most respected men in the fishing business. “I just have good business sense. I have to have a gut feeling. Sometimes it is a hell of a risk but you have to say, ‘it’s going to work’.” It has.

First Mr Shadbolt concentrated on barracuda.

“I’ve done everything with barracuda,” he said. But now he is turning, to hoki and knowing it was going to be a “good fish,” bought a quota. The company catches 25,000 tonnes of hoki and now processes 10,000 tonnes at the factory, but in five years the company hopes to process it all on the Woolston site.

Every Monday the company flies live eels to London, it also processes mussels and oysters, while the company makes sure the whole fish is used.

The head and guts are ground into fish meal and shellfish shells are crushed into poultry grit.

Mr Shadbolt said the name for the company came from a woman in a fish and chip shop in Napier to whom he had arranged to sell oysters. He started the company

in 1960 10 years after the shop began.

The firm moved to the present site in 1977. There were plans to take on more staff in the next six months and further expansion which Mr Shadbolt preferred to say little about.

Freezer space for 6000 tonnes of fish meant the company never ran short for processing. The company also looked to the local market and kept up supply as well as chasing exports.

Mr Shadbolt thinks there is plenty of hoki “out there.” “For the first time the industry should have the resources to catch the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) this year,” he said.

Mr Shadbblt is considering an as yet. relatively unknown species, southern blue whiting, for the future — but that’s another story.