Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Increasing Demand for Sea Food in the World Market

The trend in the world for the last few decades was to move back to the natural products; organic products, hybrid cars, etc... And the sea food in most parts of the world could be identified as one of the most preferred choices of the people who prefer the natural products. There is a belief in most of them that the fish products give the best nourishment in all the meat products which we consume.

Especially in the main markets for Sri Lankan sea food industry the demand trend for the last decade or so was quite fascinating. Out of the three main markets namely; Europe, USA and Japan both the Europe and USA has shown a huge demand whilst Japan also has shown a very steady increase in the sea food consumption in the last few years.

The main competitive advantage of Sri Lanka for the entirety of the transport /export timeline was the quality which Sri Lanka is renowned for. When compared with the main competitors of Sri Lanka such as Indian’s, Thai’s and the Indonesian’s who mostly concentrate on the volume exports Sri Lanka holds the advantage of being the best quality supplier in the region. Due to that the increase in demand in those international markets which accounts for the majority of the total world sea food consumption gives a very positive signal for a bright future ahead for the sea food industry in Sri Lanka.

Especially it’s important for the country to have a long term vision for the development of the sea food business which has a similar potential as tourism. If I bring to you one good example the potential of it is, before the war erupted in Jaffna there were 3 factories who did the exporting and in the Tamilnadu area there were no sea food exporters. But with the war starting the Sri Lankan exporters had to close down those 3 factories whilst the Indians opened up 3 factories in the Tamilnadu area. Currently the joined income of those 3 factories amounts to more than 10 million US dollars per month. So for the last 20 years if that money came to Sri Lanka, the country should have earned more than 2,400 million US dollars which was a very huge sum which we lost due to the war.

Due to the fact that there would be a huge demand from those markets of the developed countries for ‘ready to eat sea food products’ which would outclass the traditional shelf bought cook, fried or battered sea food products. The country should seriously think of some way to take the maximum use of the existing competitive advantages to good use and develop a firm range of value added and branded products of some nature to meet the world demand in another 10 years time.

Sri Lankan Sea Food Suppliers

The sea food industry of Sri Lanka can be divided into many small parts. Broadly it can be divided into the classification such as domestic trade and the international trade. In the domestic trade also there are various types of people concentrating on various different target groups in the country.

There are the small fish sellers all around the country. And there are these sellers such as the ‘Fresh Fish’ who are selling to a much higher target group with an extensive range of outlets in Colombo and suburbs. Furthermore with the introduction of the Supermarkets to this country there are some of the value added products marketed by the Sri Lankan businessmen such as cleaned packeted cuttle fish, Peeled prawns etc… which has a high demand.

Apart from that there are many exporters who exports sea food based products to the International market. There are around ten major suppliers of the processed sea food to the European, Japanese and the USA markets such as the Agro Marine, Alpex Marine, Secco and Indiwary Aqua to name a few. These suppliers process the sea food in factories mainly situated in the Western Province which are constructed according to the highest international quality standards. The highest income of the sea food exports comes from the tuna, shrimps and crabs whilst the other sea food exports such as lobsters, crab shells, octopus, shark fins also brings a substantial amount of foreign income to the country.

Few years back Sri Lankan suppliers used to produce the fish and by farming specially designed for the breeding of the prawns for the international market but the White Spot Disease which affected the entire prawn farming nearly flattened the industry. But due to the determination of the businessmen who were involved in the industry they were able to find out other means and survive in the market. Now this could be identified as a prime source of income generator to the country in the years to come.

History of Sea food processing in Sri Lanka

Even thought there might be some sort of fishing and consumption of sea food from the early days, the sea food exports of Sri Lanka has a very short history. Sri Lanka has a very good location advantage compared to most of the other countries for the sea food industry. Especially the coastal belt in the North and Eastern parts of the country can be rated as some of the best fishing areas in the region which has all the fundamental requirements which is needed for quality fish breeding.

At the earliest stages very few businessmen exported sea food to the foreign countries. They directly purchased the sea food from the sea mongers and sent them abroad in iced packs without doing any processing. But since there is a good environment for fishing in Sri Lanka they later focussed into more volume based methods.

Normally the fish needs a shallow sea. The rock beds which spans across the North and Eastern costal belt provides the shelter for the small fish to breed well. And the salt composition of the sea in that area is also at the best level for fish. Due to those factors the costal belt of Sri Lanka is a fishing paradise. In the early stages of the fishing exports few companies set up their plants in the Jaffna Peninsula and started to operate from there. During this period the total export was from the sea catch. But with the riots erupting they had to close down their factories and move to the Western costal belt.

And then big multinationals operating in the country such as Unilever and Carson Cumberbatch the concept of Aquaculture was bought to Sri Lanka for Prawns. In this they breed the prawns in hatcheries and developed much higher quality of sea food products. And then the golden age of the sea food processing industry came in the early 90’s. But the White Spot disease destroyed the success of that in a very short period.

But now slowly but steadily the industry is growing again and now it heavily depends on the sea catch once more again. And the high variety of sea food products has given the exporters to minimize their risk of investment because during the periods of low supply of certain varieties they can always depend on the other varieties.

Now the sea food processing have developed to a stage where the exporters always try to do some value addition and market their products to a higher segment of the market always which could be seen as a positive improvement for the future of the industry in Sri Lanka. But the ultimate realization of the industry would be to produce the high end products such as the ‘Ready To Eat sea food products’ to the EU counties, but there is a long way to go to achieve this position. But if the industry improves on like this and the governments gives the proper attention to the industry the future is very bright.

White Spot Disease

The prawns at the top and right of the picture shows the pick body colour typical for the acute phase of infetcion. The bottom and the left hand side pictute shows the classical White Spot Diseased after the acture phase

For most of you who are not familiar to the topic of Aqua Culture Industry this would sound as an unfamiliar term,
but for the one’s engage in the industry this would be a term which bring back some horrible memories. To be straight forward this is the diseases that made a big lost and damaged to the shrimp culturing industry which brought lot of foreign exchange to the county as well as kept remain 80% of net profit within the country of its exports. Many countries which exported in volume base in South Asian Region such as India, Sri Lanka, Thaiwan, Vitenam etc got affected by this horrible disease and there were many people wiped out from this aqua culturing industry.

The early 90’s was the period where the prawn farming came to the climax for anyone looking at it at a glance would be seen as a mine of gold. During this period a few major exporters dominated the marketplace and earned huge amount of profits. During this period more than 4000 acres of land were used for the aquaculture. Almost all the lands which was suitable for prawn faming was utilised at this stage. But with the government change in the year of 1994 the supporters of the newly elected government by force acquired the reservation lands and started to do the farming. Due to this factor within one year the land used for farming skyrocketed to 12000 acres. And the hatcheries used to produce the baby prawns mushroomed from 4 to more than 100. But sufficient qualified personnel needed for the maintenance of these hatcheries were not to be found in Sri Lanka and most of the hatcheries maintained a very low standard in terms of the quality. Furthermore the water supply to those farms was mainly from the lagoons through the canals such as Hamilton Canal using the high and the low tide of the sea. But due to the excess land capacity the water systems started to malfunction and the polluted water got stagnated in many of the prawn farms giving the chance for diseases to generate and kill the prawns. At the end the disease affected the whole South Asia to a considerable extent making a great loss to the country’s foreign income generation.

The blame of this devastation could be finger pointed directly at the government which was so inefficient both pre & post to the disease. Normally for a business of this nature the quality standards plays as the fundamental theme for success. But when the new suppliers mushroomed the government did very little checking into the quality standards of them both at the start up stage and when they are moving on with the operation. But at the end due to the determination of few of the original suppliers still the industry is running and showing signs of the good days again with the continues demand increase in the last few years.

So by now onwards at least if the government can look forward and get their acts together and give the best support to the industries as these which has a very high growth potential Sri Lanka would develop to a much higher state.

Current State of the Sea Food Exports of Sri Lanka.

Sea Food Industry is one of the industries which had become one of the great income generators for Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka having being an island blessed with a sea bed around the whole country has many varieties of fish which can be processed and exported to foreign countries.

Sea food exports comprises of many suppliers in Sri Lanka specially in the coastal belt of the country. The major exports of the country is done by few major exporters each specializing in one or two areas as shark fins, cut and clean crabs and crab meat, prawns, cuttle fish etc… The main markets for which Sri Lanka exports its production are the markets of Japan, USA and Europe.

Even though the exports of Sri Lanka generates good amount of income to the country there are a lot of other areas to which the country can specialize in such as the value added products specially to the up market client-tele in the European counties. The other countries specialize in this trade are the countries such as India, China, Thaiwan, Vietnam ect. but Sri Lanka holds a crucial competitive advantage over them in terms of the location advantage. In addition to that the quality maintained by the operators who supply the processed sea food to the foreign countries can be easily outclass any other competitor in the region. But the lack of interest and the support given by all the governments which ruled the country has resulted in the lack of technological adaptation in the country for this industry which the other competing countries have capitalized on. Due to these reasons if the countries governing bodies looks into these areas and try to get the right acts together Sri Lanka and its sea food processing suppliers can give Sri Lanka a big sum of Foreign Exchange and employment opportunities for many of the youth in the country in a very short period.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Marketing Division

Marketing Division

Product Range :
Headless shell on Black Tinger
Head on Black Tiger
Headless sea caught white prawns
Headless sea caught flower
Jumbo headless sea caught black tiger.
Peeled un devained prawns (PUD)
Swimming Crabs
Cuttle Fish

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Sea Food Processing for International Market in SriLanka !!!

In the world, there is a huge international market for Sri Lankan sea food products. Such as Prawns (Shrimps), Cuttle Fish, Cut Crabs, Lobsters, Octopus, many varieties of Fishes.

Here in Sri Lanka, there are some major exporters which do involve in exporting processed frozan and packed sea food items according to the buyers requirments in many part of the world. We do exports mainly to Japan, USA , Europe and Midle East markets.

Indiwary Aqua (Pvt) Ltd is one of the largest exporters of Processed sea food ( Shrimps, Cut Crab) to Japan and USA in Sri Lanka.

Company Information
The Company : Indiwary Aqua (Pvt) Ltd.
Legal Form : A private limited company in corporation in Sri Lanka under the companies Act No 17 of 1982 in 1992 as a private limited company.
Company Registation No :
Principal Place of Business : St. Martin Industrial Park
Bangadeniya, Chilaw,
Sri Lanka.
Tel : 0773159009
E-mail : indiwary19@yahoo.com; vajirasf@gmail.com
Blog Site : www.seafoodexports.blogspot.com

Marketing Division
Product Range :

Headless shell on Black Tinger
Head on Black Tiger
Headless sea caught white prawns
Headless sea caught flower
Jumbo headless sea caught black tiger.
Peeled un devained prawns (PUD)
Swimming Crabs Cuttle Fish










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