A petition signed by thousands of residents has been delivered to Young’s Seafood in Fraserburgh urging the firm not to abandon the town.
It is feared that hundreds of livelihoods will be destroyed if the fish processing firm, which lost a lucrative supermarket contract earlier this year, quits the north-east port.
Yesterday local councillor Charles Buchan delivered a petition signed by more than 4,000 Fraserburgh residents to the factory manager Darren Beecham.
Mr Buchan and his ward colleague Brian Topping hope the emotional appeal could sway the firms bosses when they make a final decision on whether to axe their Watermill Road plant later this month.
“We had 4,400 signatures,” Mr Buchan said. “Considering the size of the town, and that we only spent a week collecting them, that’s probably half of the adults in the town.
“We’ve been overwhelmed by the response of the townspeople. They were queuing up to sign. We enlisted the help of some shop keepers and they were saying the same.”
Mr Buchan, chairman of Aberdeenshire Council’s fisheries subcommittee, added that given more time the petition may have attracted the signature of every adult in the port.
A statutory 45-day consultation period about potential redundancies at the factory is due to close at the end of August, when senior bosses at the firm will meet to finalise “restructuring” plans.
Last night a Young’s Seafood Limited spokeswoman said: “We welcome all input from interested parties, and appreciate the importance of the site to the community as a whole.
“We will feed this in for consideration as part of the consultation process.”
The delivery of the petition comes as senior north-east politicians raise fresh doubts about a £1.34million funding package offered to Young’s sister plants in Grimbsy
MP Eilidh Whiteford and MSP Stewart Stevenson are concerned a government grant available to the firm south of the border may encourage Young’s to expand their Grimbsy operation at the expense of Fraserburgh jobs.
Ms Whiteford and Mr Stevenson have now written to the UK Government to seek clarification on whether the package breaches EU state aid legislation.
The department for business has stressed money has not directly been offered to the seafood processors but instead Young’s has been invited to apply to a regional grant scheme.