December 16, 2010

Kyokuyo to revamp Asian operations for expansion

Japan's Kyokuyo Co. will reorganise its overseas arrangement in seafood processing to expand its business in Thailand and Vietnam.

The processing capacity at a partner factory in Thailand was recently doubled to 4,000 tonnes a year from 2,000 tonnes.

In Vietnam, the seafood distributor is searching for additional production contractors because an existing partner factory is already operating at near full capacity. New partners will be selected later this fiscal year at the earliest. The resulting increase in Vietnamese output is designed to meet customer requests that seafood not be produced in China, site of a string of food poisoning and other incidents.

Still, Kyokuyo has installed a new line at a partner factory in China's Shandong Province and will bring it on-stream this month or later. Output on this line is expected to reach 1,500 tonnes annually.

However, the main partnership factory in a different part of Shandong is having difficulty keeping its production levels up because many migrant workers from other parts of the country have failed to return from a long holiday. The Qingdao factory's output is expected to fall to 7,000 tonnes this fiscal year from 8,800 tonnes in fiscal 2009.

Kyokuyo processes such seafood as salmon, mackerel and crab in Thailand, Vietnam and China. Production in these three countries is expected to total 27,800 tonnes on an ingredient basis this fiscal year. More than 90% of this will be shipped to Japan and supplied to food producers for secondary processing or sent directly to volume retailers.