ESTONIA
Latikas processes locally caught freshwater ďŹ sh as well as imports
Creating new products from old species Estonia produces just under 3,000 tonnes of freshwater ďŹ sh per year. This is a relatively small volume seen in relation to catches from the Baltic Sea, but some of the freshwater ďŹ sh species such as pike-perch are highly sought after on international markets.
O
ther freshwater species have a ready market within Estonia and some companies are experimenting with new products made from these in order to differentiate themselves. One of these is Latikas, a family owned company, located in Tartumaa at the southern part of the Peipsi lake. Neidi Narusing, the sales and marketing manager, says Latikas is a processing company that also owns fishing vessels and can thus meet most of its requirement of raw materials from its own resources. Among the products the company makes is minced fish meat made from freshwater bream.
Minced fish means no bones Like many freshwater species, bream is a rather bony fish and mincing the meat is one way of addressing that problem as the bones get finely minced as well and can no longer disturb the consumer. The fish is filleted first, of course, as the fillets are boneless and also valuable. What is left is then minced and made into fish burgers. Two thirds of the content of the burger is fish meat, while the rest is onion, potato, and carrot. In the company kitchen three cooks are preparing fish, frying the fillets and making the burgers. We find that three
is a good number, observes Ms Narusing, with more time gets wasted, while fewer means everything cannot be done on time. Altogether six cooks operate the kitchen in two shifts of three each. The company also produces a range of smoked products including bream fillets and Arctic char, which is imported from Poland, as well as other species that the company catches itself. In fact, most of the production is based on Latikas’ own catch, says Ms Narusing. Catches of bream alone amount to some 300 tonnes per year, and in addition there are harvests of pike, pike-perch, perch, and other species. The main catching seasons for bream are in the spring in March and April, and again in September and October. The price the company pays the fishermen is determined by the season. The price for pike and pike-perch varies with the season, while the price of bream is more or less the same. As the catches arrive in the boats they are unloaded and taken immediately into the facility to be sorted. Fish that is to be sold whole goes in one direction, while fish that is to be processed – gutted, filleted, etc. – goes in another. There is still a market for whole fish, which is sold at wholesale markets as well as by fishmongers, because there are customers who prefer it. Hauls of bream tend to large
and the company cannot process all of it at one go, so a lot of it is frozen. But whole frozen bream is a product too that we sell to customers in Latvia and Azerbaijan, says Ms Narusing, many of whom prefer the smaller fish, which they smoke. In theory they could get the smoked fish from us, points out Ms Narusing, but they smoke it in a different way in Azerbaijan, which may be why they would rather import the whole frozen fish and process it locally. Bream is popular in Azerbaijan because it exists there too and is well known.
Adapting product range to market demand The mix of products has been changing over time shaped by tastes as well as the availability of
certain species. About a decade ago pike was highly demanded, but then that changed and pikeperch and perch became popular instead. But now, since the company has started selling in Tallinn, where people eat a lot of marine fish, herring, flounder, and this year also garfish, are some of the species that the company processes for this segment. Essentially, we try and provide the market with what it wants, says Ms Narusing. The production of bream fillets and minced bream meat is however a reaction to what Ms Narusing calls a problem with the bream market, that started around the time of the Russian embargo on imports from the EU. This also affected the market for roach. Now many of the customers who want bream are those who can afford little else,
Bream is processed in a number of ways. Here, a butterfly style gutted fish preparatory to smoking. Eurofish Magazine 4 / 2017
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