August 10, 2010
China's Rongfu first to transport live fish by rail
Rongfu Aquaculture has announced that the "Live Fish Transportation from Southern China to Northern China by Train" national project has reached a breakthrough after two years of development and testing.
Rongfu, which is in the business of cultivating, harvesting, and trading of tilapia, snakefish, and other aquatic products in China, has become the first company in Guangdong province to be authorised to use this technology.
The national project has been run by Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Railway since 2007 when Chinese National Development and Reform Commission included it in its 11th Five Year Plan.
Shanghai Ocean University has been leading the research on this project, and under the request of project director Ma Yunxian, the company has participated in this project since its inception.
"Chinese prefer to purchase live fish," said Chen Zhisheng, the chairman of Rongfu. "This is quite different from the process in the US, where people normally eat refrigerated, frozen, or processed fish. The challenge is that fresh water fisheries are concentrated in southern China and in the winter, there is a shortage of fish in the North.
Transporting fish by truck from south to north is expensive. More importantly, many of the fish die during transport. In this project, we have built railroad containers that circulate water and control the temperature. In our testing, we have had a much improved survival rate at much lower cost. Mass production of these containers is now progressing. This should enable us to gain a strong competitive advantage in selling and delivering fish to northern and inland regions of China."
Chen continued: "We believe, by putting such technology into use, we are clearly at a big advantage over other smaller competitors to transport snakehead fish to northern China. Our next step will commence the study on the transport of tilapia and other breeds."
