Shrimp sales a success

Photo by: Chun Sophal
Lines of workers deal with shrimp at a Nautisco plant. The company has struck a deal to export 50 tonnes per month to South Korea and Japan.

via Khmer NZ

Monday, 09 August 2010 15:01 Chun Sophal

NAUTISCO Seafood Manufacturing has sold a large batch of shrimp to two Japanese and South Korean firms, in a deal set to draw more than a million dollars to the Kingdom this year.

Nautisco’s Sihanoukville plant has agreed to provide 50 tonnes of shrimp worth US$300,000 every month from August. According to the firm, 30 tonnes will be sent to Japan’s Hanwa Co Ltd and the other 20 tonnes to Korea’s Wooil PS Corporation. The first lot has already been sold.

“We hope that the exports will help increase revenue and employment for Cambodian people,” said Nautisco Manager Sam Pov yesterday.

He said the processing factory bought up to 2.5 tonnes of shrimps from local fishermen per day for export.

His company generally sold about 90 percent of the cooked and fresh shrimps it produced to overseas markets, and used the rest for supply local supermarkets and hotels, he said.

“We want the world to know that Cambodia also has processed seafood like other countries,” Sam Pov said.

In 2008, Nautisco invested more than $3 million to build a shrimp-processing factory able to deal with 15 tonnes of shrimps per day in Preah Sihanouk province’s Steung Hav district.

In May, investment fund Leopard Capital acquired a 31.48 percent stake in the Nautisco plant for $1.6 million in a move that the firm said would accelerate its expansion and success.

General Department of Fisheries Administration general director Nao Thuk could not be reached yesterday.

Cambodia caught 75,000 tonnes of seafood in 2009, according to the government.