Raise training scheme age limit, says SSPO chief
Salmon industry spokesman Scott Landsburgh has urged the Scottish government to extend the modern apprenticeship scheme to workers over 25.
Speaking to the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, Landsburgh, the chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation, said: "We have an ageing workforce in the salmon industry, which has been going for 40 years.
"We have a lot of people over the age of 25 whom we would like to enter into a modern apprenticeship programme, because a lot of them now require skills that are different from the skills with which they originally entered the industry.
"It would benefit us enormously to upskill the over- 25s in this country."
National accreditation
Asked why upskilling was best done through such a programme, rather than by individual companies, he told fishfarmingexpert.com that it would give fish farm workers national accreditation.
"It is going to get harder and harder for all employers everywhere to get good quality staff in the future, and it would help us if we could be able to retrain through a modern apprenticeship scheme people who are maybe that little bit older who might want to go through a retraining scheme, and a modern apprenticeship could help with that," said Landsburgh.
"It gives national accreditation, that's the key thing, and therefore it becomes portable for the individual.
"It's the demographic we're heading into (with fewer people in the labour market); it's going to get tougher. I think everybody is finding it. I'm talking to people in other sectors and I hear that they're really struggling to get high-quality people. There aren't enough young people coming through now."
Hundreds of skilled people
Speaking to the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee last month, Landsburgh said advances in salmon farming technology would eventually require "hundreds" of skilled employees.
He told the committee there was "a strong demand in our sector for people with high engineering skills. That is strategically significant for us, because we are about to invest in large-scale recirculating aquaculture systems for the production of juvenile salmon, which is part and parcel of managing the environment in a better and more effective way.
"We will eventually need hundreds of highly skilled people and there is pressure to attract and retain them and to provide them with a good career. They are in an international marketplace."
