Contact
Jónas Rúnar Viðarsson
Director of Business and Development
jonas@matis.is
Seafish in the UK, which is to some extent Matís' sister organization, hosted a conference in Aberdeen at the end of March, entitled the Scottish Seafood Summit. This was the first time that Seafish hosted such an event in Scotland, but similar conferences have honored annual events in Grimsby for years, the so-called Humber Seafood Summit.
Seafish spokesmen said the conference in Aberdeen was a resounding success, with around 150 people attending the conference and an additional 100 people watching the event live on the agency's website.
The main topic of discussion was, of course, Brexit and the possible consequences were discussed from various perspectives. One seminar was dedicated to discussing the impact of Brexit on fishing constraints, but the UK fisheries sector is heavily dependent on imported labor. This seminar discussed, among other things, automation and technological innovation, and what opportunities there are in using automation to replace labor that will be more difficult to import into the UK following Brexit. Jónas R. Viðarsson, professional leader at Matís, was invited to the conference to discuss automation in the Icelandic fisheries sector and what the development has been in connection with technological innovations and manpower needs in Iceland. Jónas' presentation can be seen here, but his speech attracted much attention and he received a number of inquiries after it. It can be said that the conference guests were divided into two equal groups regarding the future vision for the Scottish fishing industry, where about half thought it would be best to go the "Icelandic way" by focusing on efficiency and automation; but the other half believed that it would be more appropriate for the authorities to ensure that the fishing industry can survive in its current form without focusing on financial gain. All presentations from the conference can be found on the Seafish website here.