GRIMSBY seafood executive Anita Barker will remain as chairman of Humber Seafood Group, following her shock departure from the helm of the company she rescued.
A strategic review has brought together the management of three business units of Icelandic Group, as first reported on www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk and in detail in Thursday's Telegraph.
Cleethorpes-born Malcolm Eley will lead it as chief executive, heading up both Seachill, the business he was managing director of, and Coldwater, from where Mrs Barker is to leave.
Speaking to the Telegraph, she said: "I am positive, and really proud of Coldwater, and where it has come from. I am really convinced the track it is now on will continue strongly.
"I will remain as chairman of Humber Seafood Group, and I will have more time to promote it now. I will be getting behind that with some passion."
Mrs Barker was crowned Northern Lincolnshire Business Person Of The Year in 2009, having been credited with empowering a huge Grimsby workforce into turning round the fortunes of one of the town's biggest seafood processors.
The accountancy-trained married mother-of-two arrived in Grimsby having worked in the industry with Northern Foods, Hazlewood – which became Greencore Group – and Geest, which became Bakkavor, with a spell with Boots in her native Nottinghamshire inbetween.
Icelandic Group chief executive Finnbogi Baldvinsson approached her about a financial management role in Grimsby's Coldwater, and in a previous interview Mrs Barker told the Telegraph about that initial arrival. "I came in first and foremost because I developed a fabulous working relationship with Finnbogi," she said.
"Once I had seen the business I saw so much potential in terms of the products and the people. I cannot do a job I do not believe in.
"We did a lot of things right but we hadn't thought through enough about where we were going and the shape of the business. We hadn't spent enough time on relationships with customers, employees, unions and the banks, but we could only do something positive with that.
"I had come in as financial director to understand why we were losing so much money. Three months in, they offered me the job as MD."
Consolidation of operations in Grimsby followed, with a West Midlands plant closed and production brought to North East Lincolnshire.
Major strides in research and development have also been made, with a further £2.2 million investment revealed this year at Coldwater's East site – in the form of an industry-leading coated manufacturing production line. It brought in 20 further jobs, taking the head count to 300 across both South Humberside Industrial Estate plants.
ON THE WEB: Europe's Food Town 2013 – a special supplement majoring on the seafood sector, can be read as an eBook on line at www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk