The government of the Seychelles has announced it will demarcate a special fish processing zone as part of the island nation’s effort to ease procurement of seafood from its fisheries, supporting the performance of its industrial and small-scale fisheries and aquaculture subsector.
Roy Clarisse, the country’s special advisor in the Department of Fisheries, has said the proposed 70,000-square-meter area on the man-made Ile du Port off the main Island of Mahe, will give fishing industry players access to essential facilities such as central common cold storage.
The Seychelles, through its 2019 Fisheries Sector Policy and Strategy, has outlined how the government – in partnerships with the private sector – hopes to develop better supply chains for seafood products. Those efforts include supporting small-scale fishers to help them minimize losses and boost production.
Clarisse said various fishing industry infrastructure facilities at the Ile du Port are to be reorganized in the new demarcated area – located north of the IPHS quay at the port. The reorganization will ensure compatible operations that complement one another are lumped together so as to safeguard the safety of the seafood products destined for local and international markets.
"[Fish processing facilities] can be affected by the type of other activities in its surrounding, in particular to health requirements of the products," Clarisse said. "It is imperative that they are located in areas with surrounding activities that are compatible with the activities of fish handling and processing."
The Seychelles is a major seafood processing hub and has recently launched several initiatives to boost the contribution of seafood to the overall economy.
At Port Victoria – Seychelles’ important tuna hub in the Western Indian Ocean – more than 250,000 metric tons (MT) of purse-seined tuna are transshipped and landed. The government is focusing on not only increasing the share of the landed tuna that is processed locally, but reducing the transshipped volumes.
The Seychelles, which hosts the second-largest tuna canning factory in the world in terms of capacity – the Indian Ocean Tuna factory, operated by Thai Union – estimates its total capture at 136,200 MT, with 95 percent of it made up of tuna species caught by industrial Seychelles-flagged vessels, according to FAO.
Photo courtesy of the Seychelles Department of Fisheries
