Young’s Bluecrest
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | food |
| Founded | 1805 |
| Headquarters | Ross House, Wickham Road, Grimsby, England |
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Key people
|
Stewart James, managing director. |
| Products | food |
| Owner | Lion Capital |
|
Number of employees
|
3,000 |
| Website | www |
Young's Seafood Ltd. is a British producer and distributor of frozen, fresh, and chilled seafood, supplying approximately 40% of all the fish eaten in the United Kingdom every year. It is headquartered in Grimsby, England.
The company as it is today was formed through the merger of Young's and Bluecrest in 1999. It is privately owned by venture capital concern Lion Capital LLP who purchased the parent company Foodvest (part of CapVest) in July 2008. It is a major player in the European seafood industry and also owner of sister company, Findus AB, based in Malmö, Sweden.
Prior to the merger with Bluecrest, Young's itself had been the result of a number of takeovers and management buyouts.
The 1805 foundation of Young's is based on that being the year when one Elizabeth Martha began selling fish on the Greenwich quays. In 1811, Martha married William Timothy Young, a member of a fishing family based on the River Thames since the mid-18th century, thus combining their fishing and selling businesses. The business prospered and later moved downriver to Leigh-on-Sea.
By the end of the 19th century the business, under William Joseph Young, had become a prominent fish merchanting and wholesaling company, operating its own fleet of small boats primarily for fishing whitebait and shrimp. In 1890, the company moved its headquarters to London to begin supply the city's catering market - a move boosted after 1895 when a railway connecting Leigh-on-Sea to London was built, enabling the morning catch to arrive in the city before lunchtime.
Young's expanded throughout the 1920s, becoming one of the first companies in England to import salmon and debuting the company's most successful product, potted shrimps.
The next generation of the Young family - brothers Gordon, Stanley, Douglas, and Malcolm - took over in the late 1930s and set up a new subsidiary for its wholesaling business. Another subsidiary added dockside purchasing and processing operations in Grimsby, which later emerged as the United Kingdom's (and for a time, the world's) busiest fishing port. By the 1950s, the company had built five production facilities for its potted shrimp production.
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Wikipedia