The firm Investment Fishing Group will begin to export scallops to France to take advantage of the increased demand for Peruvian products overseas and the rise in international prices.

With this initiative, the firm, which offers management and personnel outsourcing services, will venture into the global aquaculture market. ''The idea is to purchase production from a third party and head up the processing, packaging and export,'' explained the director of the firm, Santiago Freundt. The first shipments would be realised during the second half of 2010. In addition, one of the mid-term plans of the group is to enter the US market.

The executive, who also owns shares in Pelagic Fishing Group, commented that given the absence of jack mackerel and mackerel, he decided to invest around US$35 million to acquire a large trawler vessel to fish the resource within and beyond the 200-mile area.

For this reason, the company abandoned the project to build a canning plant in Pisco. "We prefer to follow the resource before investing on land. And without a doubt it was the best decision, because we just finished fishing 3,000 tonnes of jack mackerel off the coasts of Chile which will help us to compensate for the decline in the canning business,'' Freundt indicated.

The boat Francisca possesses an incorporated plant with the capacity to process 250 tonnes of frozen fish per day, and store 4,000 tonnes.