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Arab World: Seafood industry entering global markets

Global Arab Network - - Reda Darwish

Thursday, 29 April 2010 14:40

The nascent seafood industry in the Arab World has good prospects of growth and expansion as public awareness on the health benefits of sea food consumptions, say seafood representatives from the region.

"The seafood industry in the Gulf is developing and it is mostly because of change in diet. There is a focus on the Middle East on healthier eating and seafood provides a healthy balanced diet," says Laurence Coo , director of communications of the privately owned Saudi National Prawn Company (NPC).

He was speaking to the (KUNA), at the Brussels Seafood Fair, the world's largest seafood exhibition which kicked off on Tuesday and closes today Thursday.

The fair has attracted buyers and sellers from over 140 countries around the world with over 1600 exhibitors.

Situated on the Red Sea coast south of Jeddah, NPC is said to be the largest fully integrated desert prawn farms in the world.

The company has 12 farms and each farm has 10 ponds which produces 15,000 tonnes of white prawn sold in the Kingdom and exported around the world. "We believe certainly there is a future of seafood industry in the Gulf. There is obviously interest in places like Yemen and Oman anyway with farming operations. I believe that there is potential in desert areas. We are looking at opportunities and new projects,< said Cooke". Ahmad R. Al-Balla, Managing Director of NPC, said, "we cover the local market and the GCC and about 70 percent of our products is exported to Asia and Europe." He said that NPC which employs 3000 people is completely self sufficient in every facet from power and water through to pond, plant and infrastructure.

"We now have locally-produced high standard products which are readily available in fresh format. We are seeing that there is a growing interest in our products in the region," al-Balla told KUNA.

"We are launching products in the regional markets visible to the people and natural health food concerns everybody. In GCC countries people have the money and naturally they will select the good food once it is available," he added.

The Saudi seafood entrepreneur said they have been participating in the Brussels seafood fair for the last six, seven years and "Inshallah will continue to come as this is a very important fair for us." Saeed Bin Khalfan al-Nomani from the Omani Ministry of Fisheries Wealth said this was the second year of their participation in the Brussels seafood fair.

He said that four Omani companies are taking part this year main noting that their main export products to Europe are tuna and shrimp.

Al-Nomni told KUNA that more companies from the Gulf region should take part in the Brussels sea food fair.

He said the Omani people are eating fish every day and also in GCC countries there is increase of fish consumption due to health reasons.

"There is a lot of interest in our products here in the fair. There is a lot of business with our companies here," he said.

The estimated potential of fish catch in Oman stands at 287,000 tonnes. Oman exports of fish products were valued at 60.7 million rials (about USD 156 million) during 2009.

The annual per capita consumption of fish in Oman stands at 16.3 kg against the world average of 10 kg.

A number of Arab and Asian countries like Mauritania, Tunisia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand had a strong presence in the three-day fair.

Jeevano Siriwardena form the Sri Lanka export development board told KUNA that the EU market has emerged as the main export destination for Sri Lanka accounting for nearly 70 percent of total exports which have increased from USD 27 million in 2004 to USD 128 milion euro in 2008. (KUNA)

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