South Uist seaweed factory blow

Blow for promised jobs as new employer pulls out 20/6/14

A flagship business enterprise earmarked for the new Lochboisdale redevelopment has been scuppered.

Now, the promised 40 to 80 potential jobs will not happen as Marine Biopolymers turned their backs on locating a seaweed processing plant on Gasay in Lochboisdale.

The Ayrshire-based firm - which is partly owned by Angus Macmillan, the former chairman of the South Uist community owner Stòras Uibhist - received £70,000 funding from Scottish Enterprise to carry out a laboratory-scale feasibility study with Strathclyde University to test its new production process.

It now intends to build its factory on the mainland near Oban.

In 2011, Hebrides News revealed the plans for the major proposed development which could have generate £30 to £50 million in revenue.

It emerged at the time that Angus Macmillan, was privately involved in the then secret proposal to set up the factory on Gasay Island after the roads and causeways are finished.

Mr Macmillan was then one of two directors of Lochboisdale Development, the legal entity set up by the Stòras for the £10 million Lochboisdale regeneration project which includes opening up Gasay Island for industrial and commercial use.

At the time, Marine Biopolymers reckoned up to 60 permanent jobs could be created at the processing plant on top of employment for cutters.

It planned to turn fresh, wet seaweed from South Uist into dried sodium alginate as a food thickener in foods including ice-cream, olive oil spread and apple pie as well as for cosmetics.

A pilot plant - originally mooted for Mr Macmilan’s former salmon hatchery at Crooked River by Lochboisdale - was switched to Ayrshire.