Minister for Agriculture Food and the Marine, Michael Creed T.D. commented: “The EMFF Seafood Development Operational Programme was only adopted in December 2015 and I am delighted that it has so quickly seen these significant investments in our seafood sector provided with the financial supports that will ensure that these critical investments can be implemented. Collectively, these investments will deliver jobs to coastal communities, develop new value added seafood products, develop new markets and further sales for our seafood products, and develop knowledge and new processes in aquaculture production, disease management and animal husbandry. These investments will assist seafood enterprises to contribute to the ambitious growth targets we have set for our processing and aquaculture sectors. I expect to announce further grant offers under these Schemes in the coming months”.
The grant offers are made under 5 EMFF Schemes. For the processing sector, €3.4 million was awarded to 27 enterprises under the Seafood Capital Investment Scheme towards total investment of €19.4 million.
These investments are projected to create 316 jobs by 2019 and additional sales of €77 million by 2019.
In addition, €157,000 was awarded to 4 enterprises under the Seafood Scaling and New Market Development Scheme towards total investment of €335,000 and €164,000 was awarded to 8 enterprises under the Seafood Innovation and Business Planning Scheme towards total investment of €328,000.
For the aquaculture sector, €199,000 was awarded to 4 enterprises under the Knowledge gateway Scheme towards total investment of €305,000, while €382,000 was awarded to 8 enterprises under the Sustainable Aquaculture Scheme towards total investment of in excess of €1 million.
Further details of the Schemes concerned are available at http://www.bim.ie/schemes.
