History

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Our History

Downies of Whitehills is a long established family business that can trace it's roots back more than 120 years. As a supporter of local fishing boats, the fish market at Whitehills was the major source of fish for more than 110 years.

It is in only the last 10 to 15 years, as a result of the closure of Whitehills fish market, that Downies have had to source the best of the catch from other markets in places such as Fraserburgh, Peterhead, Kinlochbervie, Scrabster, Shetland, Whitby and even as far as the Faroe Islands.

With a long and successful history of meeting our customer’s needs and also striving to be a fore runner in the fish industry, the Downie family have placed great faith in the business with our modern EU approved factory and shop alongside our Internet facility.

It was not always this way. It all started from a small shed come cutting room that supplied the local parish to where we are today; exporting to Canada and we have, at one time, even supplied a major customer in Australia. Downies have always operated from Whitehills. Downies started to grow when we supplied markets in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester with whole cod,plaice and haddock.

The last 20 years has seen some of the biggest improvements in Downies history. It started with the building of two more large filleting units and further investment in a state-of-the-art filleting machines, graders, skinning machines and was added to by the construction of larger offices.

It was at this time that our retail shop was built to its existing size as our customer base was ever increasing. There has also been a custom built cold store which can hold up to 350 pallets of frozen goods at any one time thus ensuring strict quality control.