The Scottish Fisheries Council Fuel Task Force commissioned Seafish to conduct a segment by segment analysis of the Scottish fleet in order to identify actions that would improve fleet profit during a period of very high fuel prices.
The fuel task force intended that the actions identified should not come from external parties but rather from vessel owners, based on their experience and ideas about how to improve fleet profit. Although fuel prices decreased, the project was considered to be still worthwhile in the economic downturn and after a tender process, the project started in December 2008.
Consultation events were held for each fleet segment, to find out from members of each major fleet segment in Scotland, their views on what actions could be taken to improve fleet profit. The attendees at the events were very enthusiastic in their participation and nearly 200 proposed actions arose during the events. The project team, consisting of Seafish, AEA Technology and Anderson Solutions, then analysed the ideas and outputs from the consultation events and evaluated the actions using a multi-criteria analysis system.
The consultation events also provided insight into the longer term aims and ambitions of the participants in the different fleet segments and a review of these ambitions, and how the proposed actions could help to achieve them.