Ian Roberts with the Salmon Wagon during a test run at Mowi's processing plant at Rosyth last year. Photo: Mowi.

Mowi unhitches its Wagon

Mowi Scotland has cancelled the attendance of its Salmon Wagon at events this year due to the Covid-19 epidemic.

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The Wagon, which Mowi introduced last year, helps charities and communities across Scotland raise money by selling fresh salmon fillets either in a bun or with a noodle salad at community events. Mowi provides the chefs and the fish, and all the money raised from the food that is sold goes to local causes.

Mowi has contacted a selection of the organisations that applied to have the Wagon at their events to make a donation in lieu of the Wagon’s attendance at fundraisers. 

Charities and community groups receiving a donation include Carradale Primary School, RNLI, Glenfinnan Community Facilities SCIO, Lucky2BHere, Mallaig Pool & Leisure, and Rosyth Community Projects Limited.

‘Extremely disappointed’

After an application period in which organisations requested the Salmon Wagon to attend their event, a selection committee met in early March to choose the successful applicants. But it has now been decided the Salmon Wagon will no longer be able to attend these events due to the current government restrictions and uncertainty surrounding Covid-19.

Ian Roberts, Mowi’s Scotland’s director of communications and business development, said: “We are extremely disappointed to have to make this decision, but the safety of our team and our communities is, as always, our primary focus.

“After monitoring the situation closely over the last few weeks and having been informed that a number of the events we were due to attend were already cancelled, we made the difficult decision to contact our applicants.

“With nearly all businesses feeling the effects of these unprecedented times, our charities are also really struggling due to event cancellations, so our donation in lieu of attendance has been very gratefully received and we are delighted to be able to support these worthy causes in some way. We will also try wherever possible to support the same events in 2021.”

Not the end of the road

Roberts, who brought the Salmon Wagon concept over to Scotland after developing something similar for Mowi in British Columbia, said Mowi was open to the idea of reviewing the situation later in the year if things do change.

“We would love to see the Wagon out on the road at some point later in the year,” said Roberts.

“If the situation does change as 2020 progresses, we will reconsider attending events later in the year, so we would encourage everyone to keep an eye out for updates on our website.”

Readers can sign up to receive updates on the Salmon Wagon at www.mowisalmonwagon.co.uk