Tasmania’s scallop industry is facing a workforce crisis, with many producers now having to send their catch overseas for processing.

Producer Allan Barnett says scallops are being sent to Thailand to be shucked.

He told Landline it was now hard to get scallop shuckers in Tasmania.

“Here in Tassie, we just can’t get it done, ‘nowadays,” he said.

“I mean the factories are all running to full capacity of what they can do, and it’s hard to get scallop splitters ‘nowadays.

“Most of the women that we’ve got splitting the scallops are getting on a bit, and most of them have been doing it for 20 or 30 years, and there’s no young people coming through who are trained to do it, so it’s a real problem for us in the industry.”