KOCHI: Shrinking catches and rising demand in the domestic market

KOCHI: Shrinking catches and rising demand in the domestic market are prompting the country's seafood sector to take up farming of high value fishes like Tilapia and Pangasius in a big way. Belonging to the category of fresh water fishes, Tilapia and Pangasius fetch Rs 200 per kg to Rs150 per kg in the local market.

While China and Vietnam are the major global players in Tilapia and Pangasius, the culturing of other varieties of fishes like Cobia and Seabass is also being done on a small scale in the country for commercial exploitation. But the rising interest in Tilapia and Pangasius seems to be linked to the scope for higher commercial exploitation.

The Mumbai-based West Coast Fine Foods, which owns shrimp farms in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka is venturing into the farming of red and black tilapia through cage culture in a dam reservoir in Maharashtra.

"Initially, we plan to put up 20 cages and scale it up to 4000 cages by 2017. Around 2 tonnes of fish can be harvested from a cage in a year," said Kamlesh Gupta, founder chairman of the company.

To begin with, the company decided on both Tilapia and Pangasius.However, the company decided to zero in on Tilapia, as it has a robust demand in tier-2 and tier-3 cities as well, Gupta added. Vietnam is the largest producer of Pangasius or Basa, which is imported in large quantities to India from Vietnam.

Ananda Enterprises in Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh is a leading player in Pangasius production. It is also doing the farming of tilapia in a small way. "We produce about 50 to 100 tonnes of Pangasius and about 10 to 20 tonnes of Tilapia in a month.

Unlike the Vietnam pangasius, the ones we produce is not white in colour as we do not add any antibiotics or other substances," said Anand, director of the company. Pangasius has a huge requirement in restaurants across the country.

Down south in Kerala, Alappuzha based Ahmedul Kabir has been farming Tilapia in paddy fields using rain water. "Last year I harvested 12 tonnes from 6.5 acres. This time I am planning to farm in 22 acres by taking more area on lease," he said.

He spent around 9 lakh and earned a profit of 40 per cent. Kabir starts harvesting when the fish attains a weight of 350 gms after three months of starting the farm. "This way it is easier to market and there would be several harvests during the farming period which stretches to 8 months," he added.

Marketing of the fish is not difficult for companies like West Coast as it has a successful frozen food division with popular brands like Cambay Tiger .
Gupta has plans to add more value added food products and is aiming at 40 per cent increase in turnover in the current year.