Norwegian owned Pan Fish will control around 65% of the Scottish salmon farming industry after buying giant rivals Marine Harvest.
It already controls Fjord Scotland, formerly Wisco, the largest private employer in the Hebrides which runs the final big processing plant in the islands.
In a delayed report, the Competition Commission provisionally gave the huge merger the go-ahead, which now looks likely to be completed next month.
Concerns that jobs will go have been expressed, along with fears that Pan Fish’s strategy is to rationalise, centralise, implement cutbacks and slash costs. Industry observers believe it has a surplus of processing factories with one belonging to each legacy firm.
Source: FishUpdate