One of Scotland’s largest seafood companies has sold its frozen scampi business to an English competitor.

Dawnfresh Seafoods, which is Britain’s biggest producer of trout, announced the deal to sell its entire frozen scampi division, including stocks, to Whitby Seafood Ltd.

The Scottish company, which employees around 550 full-time staff, said the sale would not affect any Dawnfresh workers.

Billionaire owner Alastair Salvesen said: “I would like to thank all of our longstanding customers and suppliers for their support over many years and I wish the Whittle family and their team at Whitby continuing success in the future.”

Accounts filed with Companies House last year showed a healthy turnover of £54,834,217 for the Uddingston-headquartered business, but an operating loss of £3,860,080 over the previous financial year.

Now a major UK seafood producer, Dawnfish initially focused almost entirely on the production of Scampi in the 1980s – with a sideline in the processing of whiting and herring.

A major investment was begun to expand and develop this business before moving to a state of the art seafood factory in Uddingston in 1991 where the expansion continued into new fish markets.

Dawnfresh subsequently introduced trout processing to the factory, expanding this activity with the business of Scot Trout, and began processing salmon.

Mr Salvesen hailed the long-term investment programme and said it allowed Dawnfresh to create a “vertically integrated Scottish aquaculture business which farms trout in many parts of Scotland and adds value to a variety of fish in our factories in Uddingston, Arbroath and Grantown on Spey.”

The company declined to announce the value of the sale of the scampi business.