TURKEY
Kiliç Seafood Company looks for opportunities overseas
Investments in Mauritania to secure ďŹ shmeal and ďŹ sh oil supplies Kiliç Seafood is Turkey’s biggest producer of farmed ďŹ sh, cultivating seabream, seabass, meagre, and trout with a total annual production capacity of approximately 40,000 tonnes. The company is fully integrated with hatcheries, feed production, processing, sales, marketing and distribution. Its products are exported to 44 countries around the world making it Turkey’s leading exporter in this sector.
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he environmental law in Turkey that went into effect some years ago requires fish farming cages to be at least 1,000 m from the shore. While at the time it shook up the industry due to the higher costs it would impose, producers have since discovered that there are also advantages. Hayri Deniz, who moved to Kiliç Seafood as projects and foreign investment manager after many years in the Turkish government, says that the result of the legislation has been overwhelmingly positive. The fish are grown out at sea in water not exposed to nutrients from land, currents keep the fish in good health, and conflicts with other users are avoided.
Dedicated aquaculture zones offer stability to industry In addition the experience and expertise that comes with operating and managing offshore cages is useful knowhow that can be sold to other countries. In the Middle East, for example, there is a lot of interest in marine aquaculture, governments are making funds available and countries are asking us to establish cage farms for them, says Dr Deniz. Turkey has now established zones that are exclusively intended for the aquaculture industry giving a degree of stability to investors. www.eurofishmagazine.com
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The areas were identified and agreements were signed by all the stakeholders dedicating these zones to fish farming purposes. This kind of certainty is good for the industry encouraging investment and promoting growth. Seabass, seabream, trout and meagre are the main species produced by Kiliç Seafood and they are sold to markets in the EU and the US among other countries. While the company plans its production based on forecast demand often there may be a discrepancy between the forecast and the actual situation. However, because the markets have different specifications for the fish it is possible to adapt. Thus, if demand on European markets falls short, the fish are left to grow in the cages and are then sold in the US, where there is a preference for larger fish. Most important is the ability to supply at all times, which the company can do without trouble. As Dr Deniz says not only can the company supply fish at all times, but it can also supply in the desired specifications, whether whole round, gutted, fresh, frozen, on ice, in MAP, canned, smoked, or as ready meals. Everything is possible, he says.
Ready meals are here to stay Producing ready meals is one of the newest developments
Dr Hayri Deniz, projects and foreign investments manager in Kilic Holding.
in Kiliç Seafood. Ready meals in general are highly popular in the west, and their consumption is increasing in Turkey too. The reasons are not hard to find; higher living standards, greater urbanisation, increasing single person households, greater numbers of women in the workforce, and the lack of time to prepare meals. The recent economic crisis has also played a role as consumers switch from spending in restaurants to spending on ready meals instead. Most of these trends are here to stay and ready meals offer a quick and convenient alternative to shopping and cooking. However, many ready meals have been found to be nutritionally lagging international recommendations and are also implicated in the obesity that is plaguing many societies. Companies, including Kiliç, sense
an opportunity here for healthy ready meals that are based on fish. Kiliç has therefore invested in a processing factory for this type of product that has a capacity of 40,000 frozen portions a day. These portions are housed in a package which can then be put in the oven for 20 minutes to give a complete meal. The products have been on sale for a year in Turkey, where they are being sold in supermarket chains like Migros and Carrefour, but the plan is to start exporting them as well and negotiations are ongoing with customers in Italy, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
Microwaves, conventional ovens or plain boiling water Within Turkey, the response to the ready meals has been positive. Eurofish Magazine 5/ 2015
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