January 29, 2021

Huon Aquaculture opens processing facility in Australia's west coast

Huon Aquaculture, a Tasmania, Australia-based salmon and ocean trout company, has stamped its mark in the country's west coast by opening a multi-million dollar processing plant.

Huon confirmed that the new facility in Western Australia will manufacture products for the local state market and will serve as a strategic location for possible exports to Asia and Europe.

Callan Paske, Huon's general manager of sales and marketing, said the site in Forrestdale would make salmon products for supermarket trade, wholesale goods for restaurants and food outlets.

"Nobody wants to think about eating old seafood. Shelf life and speed to market are really important," Paske said. "From a strategic point of view, the business has been looking at having a really strategic processing footprint for the fresh format, retail-ready products across the country."

According to Paske, most of its salmon and ocean trout products originate from its Melbourne hub. "(Western Australia) gives us another opportunity," he added. "Over the longer term, as we bring online our kingfish project, we have a real opportunity from an export perspective to access Asian markets very, very quickly.

"Even European markets, if we think about direct flights to London, it's not a market that we tend to go to too often. But, potentially, WA could open that up for us."

Fisheries Minister Peter Tinley said the state government and Huon are very close in finalising the commercial arrangements for the lease area near the Abrolhos Islands. "The timeline is being met and their [Huon] production facility at Forrestdale is a very good, concrete example of that," Tinley said. "They are processing their environmental approvals through the relevant state and federal agencies to make sure their arrangements are appropriate."

The plan to produce Huon's 10,000 tonnes-per-year fishery dependsounHoudependsde on several factors including developing a fish nursery and building a shoreline base. The hatchery was allocated to produce fish by September 2021 but Tinley said, due to challenges in securing tradespeople, the date had been revised.

"The kingfish nursery in Geraldton is underway. The design and development of that are now complete and we should expect that to be completed by the end of this year," Tinley said.

 - ABC Rural