The Russian Fishery Company (RFC) has put into operation a Russian cod plant in the Murmansk region, its first processing facility built under the investment quotas program initiated by the country’s government to renew and expand fish processing facilities and fishing fleets.
The plant’s designed daily capacity is more than 50 metric tons (MT) of finished product made of cod and haddock. Export volume of premium quality products is projected to be about 5,000 MT per year. As SeafoodSource reported, the company is eyeing expansion far beyond Russian borders, for example, in Africa.
“The development of deep processing in Russia allows us to replace raw exports with supplies of high-quality products to the foreign market, which will ensure an increase in budget revenues,” RFC’s CEO Fedor Kirsanov said.
The plant is equipped with modern equipment for the correct defrosting of raw materials, the freezing of finished products to ensure high quality, and the preservation of valuable nutritional properties of fish. The equipment includes an innovative robotic line for cutting fish fillets of cod species. Unique technology equipped with "artificial intelligence," analyzing the structure of raw materials, allows it to achieve an exceptional quality of fillet cutting with minimal damage to carcass fibers and a high degree of bone removal, the company said in a statement.
The cost of the new facility was 900 million rubles (USD 13.7 million, EUR 12.34 million).
Overall, RFC has invested into three plants under the government’s quotas program.
The Russian Haddock plant, worth 250 million rubles (USD 3.8 million, EUR 3.4 million), will be built in the Murmansk region too, with an output of 25 MT a day of cod and haddock. Construction on that plant started at the end of August.
In addition, a processing factory in Vladivostok will have the capability of processing 60,000 MT of pollock annually, including 25,000 MT of value-added pollock products. Total investment will be USD 12 to 15 million (EUR 9.7 to 12.2 million.)
Both projects in Murmansk are implemented by the RFC in partnership with the Agama Group.
Photo courtesy of Russian Fishery Company
