LITHUANIA
Vasaknos supplies the domestic market with fresh ďŹ sh, and hot and cold smoked products
Fully integrated from farm to fork The Lithuanian ďŹ sh farming sector has over the years become increasingly diverse. Pond farms producing freshwater species, carps, pike, Chinese carps, pike perch, and roach among others are the most numerous, but production of rainbow trout has been increasing as has that of some exotic species such as sturgeon, eel and African catďŹ sh. Many farmers combine farming with processing to add value to the product thereby increasing the returns they can expect from their operations.
V
asaknos is a good example of this. Under Algirdas Siukscius, the director, the company first invested in a processing plant five years ago drawing on support that was available for this kind of initiative from the European Fisheries Fund, the forerunner of the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). Today the processing facility processes all the products that are produced on the farm – carp, trout, and sturgeon.
Processed ďŹ sh is entirely from own production The plant processes a number of species. Neringa Bagdanaviciene, head of production, says different varieties of carp, trout, eel, and a couple of species of sturgeon (Siberian and sterlet) are the main types of fish to be processed. Most of the fish that goes through the processing plant is produced on the farm, except for eel which is fished in the nearby lakes. The Vasaknos farm is located in Zarasai, an area known as Lithuania’s lake district, as it has over 300 lakes, including four of the country’s largest, and eight rivers. The volume of eel that is processed has increased over the five years that the processing plant has been in operation as demand for the product has grown. However, the dominant raw materials are common carp and sturgeon. The fish is not just 40
headed, gutted, cleaned and cut, but is also smoked in different forms – whole, butterflied, fillets, or portions. The sturgeon that are processed are male sturgeon between three and five years of age, and, according to Ms Bagdanaviciene, Siberian sturgeon is the best species of sturgeon for this purpose.
Value added products take many forms While certain parts of the processing are done with machines, for example, filleting large trout or carp, most of the primary processing is manual. Vasaknos is aware of the importance of creating employment in this largely rural area as apart from providing the local population with jobs it also gives people an alternative to migrating to cities or abroad in search of work. The benefits cut both ways for if people know that there are jobs available, they will be encouraged to stay on, giving companies like Vasaknos a wider range of options to choose from. The trout that are filleted on the machine are large with an average weight of 1.5 kg though some of the fish weigh up to 2 kg. The headless fish is fed to the machine and comes out at the other end as fillets. The pin bones must be removed by hand, however. Carp can also be filleted in the machine, but because it is a bony fish, the fillets are placed in another machine that will cut the
Algirdas Siukscius, Director of Vasaknos, feels that live ďŹ sh will not be sold in supermarkets for much longer.
small bones that are embedded in the flesh, so they do not bother the consumer. Apart from smoking the fillets Vasaknos has also developed other value-added products. For summer cooking, for example, fillets are marinated
with herbs to create a product that can be grilled on a barbecue. Another item is a shashlik made of sturgeon, where cubes of sturgeon meat are alternated with vegetables on a skewer which can then be placed on a grill.
Filleting is mechanical with the ďŹ nal trimming done by hand. However, manually produced ďŹ llets give a better yield.
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