TURKEY
A floating fish fillet factory
Processing operations on board a converted ferry Agromey, a vertically integrated producer of seabass, seabream with a capacity of 15,000 tonnes is one of the major producers and exporters of these two species in Turkey. It is part of the Akel Group, an agribusiness, whose core business is raw materials.
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gromey combines a fish feed plant, grow-out sites, processing facilities, and sales and distribution including a European office, to make it a highly integrated company. A hatchery is the only stage in the production chain that it lacks, but Turkey already has abundant hatchery capacity for seabass and seabream and it is not a problem to buy the fry from the market. The company’s fish feeds are sold under the brand Agromarin and are produced for both rainbow trout and seabass and seabream. The rainbow trout feeds are produced for each stage of growth, in the nursery, for ongrowing, for the grow-out stage of 60 g and up, as well as a special feed for broodstock. For seabass and seabream the company produces nursery feeds and ongrowing feeds.
Advantages of in-house feed production In Turkey many farming companies produce their own feed. This is the single biggest expense in fish production and if the company produces several thousand tonnes of fish per year it adds up to a large sum if the feed has to be purchased from an external supplier. In-house feed production has the additional advantage that it can be used to pay for fingerlings. A feed producer can, for example, enter into an 44
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agreement with a hatchery under which the producer supplies the hatchery with feed and gets fingerlings for on-growing in return. The arrangement also has the advantage that the producer then knows what feed the fry has been fed with and can make changes to the formula if necessary. Agromey is in fact in the process of expanding its feed production by establishing a second line at its plant that will be commissioned in June. This will increase its production capacity to 100,000 tonnes per year.
USD1.5m investment in floating processing plant Agromey has two on-growing sites, one in Karaburun and the other in Milas, where the cages are located. The fish are harvested after about 18 months and taken to one of two processing plants, where they are graded, filleted, frozen, and packaged. Today most of the fish produced is seabass, around 70 of the total production with a focus on big fish, above 600 g. The company is considering other species like meagre, but is well aware that it is not enough to produce a fish, it also has to be accepted by the market. Consumers tend to be conservative preferring to buy what they know, rather than trying something new. Last year the company invested in a new concept, a floating packaging
Eray Yapici, Boat Production Manager and Tolga Uruk, Sales and Marketing Director.
plant. A 67 metre decommissioned ferryboat was acquired and was renovated to be able to process fish. The whole investment amounted to some USD1.5m. The need for a suitable processing solution came up because large parts of the Karaburun peninsula are protected zones where putting up permanent structures is not permitted. Establishing a processing plant was therefore out of the question. This called for some creative thinking as the company wanted to have the processing facility as close to the cages as feasible so that the fish could be brought from the cages to the processing plant with minimal transport time. The solution was the ferryboat that was renovated at a shipyard in Tuzla, Istanbul, and equipped with a fully functioning processing plant that is certified to international standards. The boat today is anchored 0.8 nautical miles from the shore in water that is 30 m deep.
Tolga Uruk, director of sales and marketing in Agromey is justifiably proud of the new investment. The fish cages are so close to the processing facility that they can be descaled, graded, packaged on ice, and despatched so that they are, for example, in the United States within 36 hours of being harvested. The new processing capacity also enabled the company to close down its processing plant in the Torbali district near Izmir, leaving it with a single land-based plant in Aydin. At the Aydin facility we are producing fillets, and gutted fish both fresh and frozen, while on board the vessel we produce whole round fresh fish, says Mr Uruk. The main advantages of the processing plant on board the vessel are its proximity to the cages, and that it provides a space for our employees. Not being allowed to build in Karaburun means that we could not provide a space for our staff, the www.eurofishmagazine.com
05/04/14 5:47 PM