POLAND
Seamor smokes seafood for upmarket customers
Exploring opportunities in food service Based in Szczecin on the Baltic coast Seamor specialises in the production of smoked products using a variety of different species imported from all over the world.
A
chain of four retail stores in Szczecin including one at the gate of the Seamor processing plant enable residents of Szczecin to buy the freshly smoked products wherever they live in the city. The shops do not just attract the locals; Germany is a mere half an hour away by road and customers often come from there as well.
Quality is paramount It is not hard to understand why. The rich colours, the varieties of species and cuts, the choice between hot and cold smokes, together with the freshness of the products make them virtually irresistible for anyone interested in smoked fish. It is all about the quality, says Ania Pawliszak, sales and marketing manager, both
of the raw material and of the finished product. Since Poland joined the EU in 2004 high quality production and cheaper labour has sucked in fish processing operations from all over Europe making the country a European powerhouse in the sector. This has been good for the country creating a deep reservoir of processing skills, but has been tough for the individual company, which today is battling with pressure from the retail chains, labour shortages, and competition from the rest of the industry.
Wide range of smoked fish and seafood products Seamor has been operating for a quarter of a century and can
Anna Pawliszak, marketing and sales manager, and Rafał Pawliszak, vice-president of production.
feel that getting the balance right between high quality and competitiveness is getting more and more difficult to achieve. In 1993 when the company started its operations, they were in a different branch of the fish processing industry. The main activity at the time was trading in frozen fish, and it was 7 years later that it invested in a processing plant and started to smoke fish as well. Today the company has retained its trading operations, but its main focus is the processing side which it would like to develop further. Currently, a huge range of species is smoked, some cold smoked, others hot smoked, and some, such as salmon, smoked both ways. While the portfolio of products is large, it is also dynamic with new products being added at regular intervals as the company experiments with new species and cuts. Mackerel, salmon, and herring are traditional species to smoke. In addition, tuna, prawns, pikeperch, white fish, eel, black halibut, , mussels and wild salmon are some of the other fish and seafood that are also part of the smoked assortment. Countries in North America, South America, Asia, as well as Europe are the source of the raw materials. Apart from Norwegian salmon and Polish trout and carp the raw material is largely purchased frozen from a network of suppliers with many of whom the company
has had a long relationship. Two years ago, the company started smoking sturgeon which has proved to be a very popular product, not only in Poland, but also in Germany, and the Netherlands. The latest project is to cold smoke loins of sashimi quality tuna. This is an expensive product, but the company has already found buyers who are interested. Most recently the company has connected with a Japanese company that is looking for smoked fillets of mackerel with pinbones removed.
Traditional smoking procedures give the best results The processing operations at the company are also in many respects very traditional. Prior to smoking the fish is salted the customary way in brine, and the smoking itself is with time-honoured beechwood chips rather than liquid smoke. There are no additives, the only preserving agents are the salt and the smoke. In the case of the mackerel fillets without pinbones, in which the Japanese company has shown an interest, a similar product is in fact already being supplied to the Netherlands. In keeping with Seamor’s traditional approach, the pinbones are removed by hand giving a better yield and reducing the risk of pinbones being overseen
XXX FVSPl TINBHB[JOF DPN
$ )+&&