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.