Thousands of pounds’ worth of live Manx lobsters and fresh scallops have been sent 150 miles north from Heysham to Bellshill near Glasgow en-route to the south coast of England.

The detour came about as fishing bosses in the island battle to grapple with ’huge’ issues such as paperwork and red tape at the Channel ports in the wake of Brexit.

Nick Pledger, managing director of Port St Mary-based Island Seafare, said they were ’left with no other choice’ but to use Bellshill which he said is an established logistics hub for shellfish and seafood.

He said: ’Some of the normal logistic routes and hauliers that we use temporarily suspended exports into France so we had to look elsewhere and be sure the paperwork would be handled correctly.’

Usually the island’s scallops and live lobster could be expected to be taken across on the boat to Heysham, then driven to Grimsby where additional palettes of shellfish products from the UK would be added to make a full load, before being driven to the Channel ports and then on to Europe.

Bellshill was first used last week and was judged to be a success and last night (Monday) a second similar trip was taking place as Manx company Trade Distribution took a lorry across to the Lancashire port and was due to be driven up to the Bellshill hub.

There, the container was due to be dropped off and picked up by O’Toole Transport and driven down to Folkestone in Kent and the Channel Tunnel.

Mr Pledger said last week’s shipment arrived in Boulogne, France on Wednesday after leaving the island on Monday. And the hope is for the same this week.

Future operations will depend on developments which appear to be changing daily.

Dr David Beard, chief executive of the Manx Fish Producers Organisation (MFPO), said: ’We tried a different route which takes longer but we had to try any route. It is important this trade continues.

’We could not sit back and not sell.

’So we sent a trial shipment through because the route we normally use was closed, temporarily, we hope.

So we had to send them via Scotland. We are delighted the trial shipment worked.

And it did mean we had products on the French market when a lot of other people in the UK did not.’

Dr Beard said they had to be selective what routes they chose to move the seafood.