June 27, 2006

Australia's aquaculture industry urged to be more focused 

Australian aquaculture has a bad reputation throughout Europe, and the industry needs to work hard to correct it, said Hagen Stehr the 62-year-old owner of Clean Seas Tuna, based in Port Lincoln in Southern Australia.  

Hagen Stehr says Australia has a reputation of being an unreliable supplier, because it is after the best prices for its seafood.

The European market has too much potential to ignore, and Australian aquaculture companies would have to work hard to rebuild the country's tarnished image, Stehr warned. 

Past business practices have led to the country's poor European reputation, Stehr noted.

Australian companies are too fickle-minded, he said, noting that some companies shifted their focus from Europe to South-East Asia due to the higher profits there, leaving European import companies high and dry.

Stehr said that companies going into Europe should have the long-term will to stay in the market and not for just two to three months.

Stehr, who spent 45 years catching tuna, was one of the first to breed Australia's bluefin tuna in captivity and has invested US$22.5 million into high-tech fish-breeding projects. Australia's southern coast has the world's most unpolluted seas, thus the company name Clean Seas Tuna.

Clean Seas Tuna has expanded its export operations into Eastern Europe, sending trial portions of locally farmed kingfish to leading restaurants around Moscow in Russia.

The company hopes to break into the European market, which is seeking new sources of fish to compensate for declining wild seafood stocks in the northern hemisphere.