TURKEY
Kocaman Balikcilik has mastered the uncertainty of production using raw materials from the wild
Sales increase by a tenth annually Kocaman Balikcilik is among the biggest producers and exporters of marine and freshwater products in Turkey. In addition, it is involved in joint ventures to farm tuna and to produce buttered snails.
T
urkey is well known in Europe for its production and export of farmed seabass, seabream, and trout in a variety of forms. However, surrounded by the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, and with 8,500 km of coastline, the country also has a significant production of wild marine species including finfish, crustaceans, cephalopods, and topshell (rapana). In addition, thanks to abundant freshwater lakes and rivers there is also an inland fishery for certain species as well as wild-caught carp for the Iraqi and Syrian markets.
Smelt is among the important seafood products
Exporting for thirty years
originally to nearby countries such as Greece and Bulgaria. In the 80s, freezing technology became more widely available in Turkey and the company started freezing products and exporting them. Red mullet, gurnard, hake, monkfish, and pelagic fish such as anchovies, and mackerel were among the marine species sold at the time, and from the lakes carps. The company established markets for its fresh and frozen products in France, Italy and central Europe. Today Mr Basaran says the company is the biggest producer of frozen processed products thanks in part to a freezing capacity of 150 tonnes per day.
Kocaman Balikcilik, a familyowned company, was established in 1923 and has been in the fish business for three generations and on export markets for three decades. In addition to seafood it is also involved in the production and export of terrestrial snails and frogs’ legs, products that are caught in the wild from the west and south of Anatolia. Bulent Basaran, the company’s foreign trade manager recounts how, when the company was originally established, it traded in fresh fish on the domestic market mainly selling to Istanbul, which even in the early twentieth century was a city of some 2m or 3m inhabitants. Sales were also to Izmir and Ankara, two other urban centres. In the 70s exports started,
Kocaman Balikcilik is a third-generation family-owned company selling seafood and other products overseas and on the domestic market.
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The company is very active on the French market for land snails (Helix lucorum) with a turnover of 80m pieces per year. The snails are collected in the villages around Turkey by the villagers and brought to collection points across the country from where they are brought to the processing facility by truck. The gastropods go through a complex process to make them involving cooking, removing the meat, cleaning the shell, re-inserting the meat, topping with a butter sauce, and freezing. Among
the seafood produced, smelt (Atherina boyeri) is an important product, with about 2,000 tonnes exported to the EU. Smelt has two seasons, the first starting in April and extending to June, while the second starts in September and continues to the end of December. The fish is caught from lakes, but can tolerate a wide range of salinities and is also known to inhabit estuaries, coastal lakes and other brackish waters, as well as the sea. The company also processes the fish by marinating, for example, anchovies and sardines, and by smoking, such as, mackerel, as well as combines seafood including octopus into salads. These
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