Pelagic Freezing in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, United Kingdom | Refrigeration

Welcome to Pelagic Freezing, Peterhead, Scotland. Pelagic Freezing is a purpose built packing, freezing and cold storage factory based in Peterhead, the most easterly point in Scotland.  We deal primarily with pelagic fish (hence the company name!!) i.e. herring and mackerel.  Pelagic Freezing is a service company in respect that we do not buy or sell fish but instead provide the facility for grading, packing, freezing and storing our customers' products. Should you wish to purchase any of the products which we handle please contact our customers direct
Pelagic Freezing (Scotland) Limited opened its new factory in Peterhead in July 2002. The company is a joint venture between Croan Seafoods Limited and Denholm Seafoods Limited, both of which already have primary processing factories in the town (the latter through its subsidiary Alexander Buchan Limited). Minority shareholdings have been taken by two other parties from the pelagic catching sector, the Tait and Bellany families.
The new plant has been built at Keith Inch on the site of the former Asco ‘North Base’ warehouse. It provides grading, packing, freezing and cold storage services to the processing industry in the North-East of Scotland. The plant is equipped with the most up to date automated fish handling systems, which ensures that the end product is of the highest quality, and has a cold storage capacity of over 5000 tonnes.  The fish is transported from the quayside by tankers which deposit their loads into our two reception tanks, each of which holds 50 tonnes of fish and 25 tonnes of slush ice which is manufactured on site. From the tanks the fish is vacuum pumped into the factory through a grading machine into the packing lines.
The three packing lines are the latest in state of the art automation, built by Optimar of Norway. Each line makes up the carton bases and lids, weighs the fish to a predetermined weight and places them into the carton along with a plastic wrapping. Once the lids are fitted, the carton is run through a strapping machine and automatically labelled. The label states the carton weight, product type and freezing date. The lines are capable of packing at a rate of 10 tonne/hour and stack automatically into blast cages each holding 1.2 tonnes.  Once stacking is completed the product is placed in one of the hour 100 tonne blast freezers which freeze the product down to -18°C in 18 hour.  After freezing the cages are run through a destacking machine which transfers the frozen cartons onto a pallet (1 tonne/pallet) which is then automatically shrink wrapped.  The product is then put into the cold store which has a capacity for 5200 pallets.