Cluny Fish

Cluny Fish has traded from Low Street in Buckie since 1969, when it began processing white fish landed at the harbour for buyers around the Moray Firth. The Paterson family who founded the business expanded into curing sprats and herring for Scandinavian markets during the 1970s and, in 2006, bought the Shetland Smokehouse brand, relocating its smoking operation to the Buckie site in 2008. The business is now in its fourth generation of Paterson ownership, run by managing director Louie Paterson and his wife Karen. The shop and adjoining smokehouse produce cold-smoked salmon, kippers and cured seafood, sold through the retail counter and by mail order across the UK. Curing is still done by hand, using methods passed down within the family rather than industrial processing lines. Cluny Fish has stayed outside the ownership of the larger seafood groups that now dominate much of the Scottish smoked salmon trade, a point the family raises when asked how the business has lasted more than fifty years under one name.