A company that runs Plymouth’s fish market is set to cease trading in three weeks.
Staff at Plymouth Trawler Agents (PTA) received redundancy letters on Friday morning informing them the business would cease trading on 17 May.
The firm was set up in 1994 and has about 100 shareholders, a board of six directors and about 24 employees.
PTA has been contacted for comment but has yet to reply. Sutton Harbour Group, which owns Plymouth Fisheries, said it was open to working with interested parties to take over the PTA’s services.
The company runs an auction sale daily from Monday to Friday, where vessels land their catches the night before and provide them to the PTA.
Buyers can bid in person or digitally for a box or tub of fish including mackerel, squid and cuttlefish.
Rikki Down said his family had been operating as fish merchants in the city since 1971, and that the news had been “quite a shock”.
He said: “If there is nobody to take over the auction, nobody comes forward, it could very well be the end of the auction in Plymouth.”
He said you would still be able to fish out of Plymouth but the catch would have to be “transported”.
“Boats are going to divert presumably to Brixham or Newland and we’ll have to transport fish from there.
“It means more labour, more vehicle costs, later deliveries, it means a lot.”
Another fisherman said: “When I turned up this morning and was told about it I wasn’t impressed.
“I mean they have known about this for months and nobody said anything to us,” he said.
A spokesman for Sutton Harbour Group said it would “take some time to consider its implications”.
“The company is interested in working in collaboration with the fishing industry and other interested parties in finding an effective and viable solution, which would enable the replacement of the services for which PTA was responsible,” it said.
The final auction will take place on the same day as the closure of PTA.
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