December 20, 2007

Crisis crops up for Thai seafood industry

Shortage for raw materials may force seafood processors in Thailand to temporarily shut down its operations, according to a leading seafood manufacturer.

Though seafood supply has been tight in recent years, it has been now exacerbated due to high oil prices which prompted some trawler operators to scale down their activities, said Thawee Piyapatana, managing director of Pacific Fish Processing Co (PFP), a producer and exporter of processed seafood.

He noted that the number of fish caught in Thailand's sea territory had dropped by 40 percent since April this year.

The scarcity of raw materials has affected the production of surimi (minced fish meat), which is used to produce imitation crabmeat, fish tofu, and other processed seafood.

Up until this year, the 10 leading plants produced about 180,000 tonnes of surimi per year but output has declined substantially.

PFP's production has dropped to 12,000 tonnes from 14,000 tonnes last year and is expected to fall further to only 10,000 tonnes next year.

Thawee said though the problem would not seriously affect his company as it has other business and is able to import raw materials from overseas, companies making surimi would surely be hard hit and raw material shortage would affect its operations.

He urged the government to explore new fishing territories or open negotiations with Indonesia to allow the private sectors in both countries to form fishing joint ventures to address the problem.

Explicit details of the ventures including fees would allow Thailand to source sufficient raw materials, he said.