File:The Lobster Pot - a shellfish company from Wales - 2016.webm

English: The Lobster Pot - a shellfish company from Wales - 2016. After becoming the third generation to take over The Lobster Pot, Tristan Wood talks exports, exhibitions and expansions when it comes to the family shellfish business.

Business was originally founded in 1942 and I’ve been in business for the last 10 years or so and I’m the third generation. The Lobster Pot was originally founded by my grandfather and then my father and then myself now. The Lobster Pot primarily wholesale, exports, live

lobster and crab to most destinations in the world.

Our biggest market would be, for lobster, France and for crab into Asia maybe China.

When I originally took the business over we were working on a very, very small scale with very dated holding systems and everything else. Now we've got a brand-new state-of-the-art holding system which give us a lot more flexibility in delivering the very best quality to our customers

Yeah, Lee’s a great fisherman, he gets up very early in the morning and launches the boat off the beach and then goes round maybe three, four hundred lobster pots a day.

And if he catches any lobsters or crab he’ll look after them on the boat and then at the end of the day once he’s finished and he’s put his boat back on the trailer he'll give me a call and tell me what he's got and either we'll send a van to

go and collect off him or we will or he will bring it over here if he’s only got a small amount and deliver to the yard here, where the lobster is weighed in and checked and then put in the system ready for sale.

Here in Wales we’re getting keener and keener on sustainability and generally in the market everywhere.

Recently we’ve had a minimum landing size increase which has given us, I think, from 87 millimetres now to 90 millimetres which basically has given the lobsters another

year of reproduction before they are legally allowed to be caught or landed.

Which in the long term is sustainable for the business, the lobsters grow more, we sell everything by the weight so we get more per lobster and for the fishermen, hopefully, they have a bright future ahead of them.

The Welsh Government have been a great help to us supporting us with many trade shows, foreign exhibitions, foreign travel but mainly I suppose, in the last couple of years, we’ve had some European fisheries fund through Welsh Government in order for us to build new facilities and bring us up to the standards we wanted and my ambitions really.

Business obviously needs access for water, for fresh clean sea water for holding its lobsters in its tanks, but most importantly we need crystal clear

Grade A waters for our lobsters and other shellfish to be caught from and Anglesey’s a great place for that.