Vladivostok, Russia-based Russian Fishery Company and Osaka, Japan-based Daisui have signed a long-term agreement on cooperation in promoting and developing sales of RFC products derived from pollock surimi.
Daisui will be the strategic partner for RFC in surimi sales and marketing in the Japanese market, the world’s biggest pollock surimi market, and RFC will become the strategic supplier of pollock surimi for Daisui, according to a press release. The agreement also includes Pacific Rim Group, the exclusive distributor of the RFC in foreign markets;
“Daisui is the important strategic partner, cooperation with which opens up broad prospects for surimi produced by RFC in the Japanese market,” RFC First Deputy General Director Saveliy Karpukhin said. “Japanese seafood producers are world-renowned experts of the highest level. Therefore, we are confident that with the expertise and technical assistance of Daisui, RFC will ensure the highest quality of surimi from environmentally friendly wild sea-frozen pollock, harvested, and carefully processed on supertrawlers of the new RFC’s fleet.”
RFC is one of the world’s largest pollock producers and among the three leading Russian producers of wild white fish. Its primary harvested species are pollock and Pacific herring caught in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. The company is vertically integrated from fishing, to processing into fillets, mince, and surimi. It is building a new fleet of 11 supertrawlers, each designed for an annual catch and onboard processing of more than 60,000 metric tons of fish, about 2.5 times the capacity of existing vessels in the Russian Far East. The first of the supertrawlers, the Vladimir Limanov, was handed over to the company in 2020, allowing the start of surimi production. The company previously announced a strategy aiming to increase output of high value-added products frozen at sea. The company’s pollock catch is Marine Stewardship Council-certified.
Daisui Co. is an affiliated company of Tokyo-based Nippon Suisan. It has seven sales offices and five group companies in western Japan, including Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto, and reached a sales volume of 160,000 metric tons in 2020. Its seafood products carry either Marine Eco-Label (MEL), Marine Stewardship Council, or Aquaculture Sustainability Council certification.
“Based on the agreement of the three companies, the surimi produced by RFC will be imported and sold domestically by Daisui through PRG (Pacific Rim Group),” Daisui President and CEO Eiichiro Yamahashi said. “RFC’s surimi is a high-quality product made by processing of pollock with outstanding freshness landed at fishing grounds in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk of Russian waters, with a state-of-the-art supertrawler. Daisui is very honored to be a strategic partner and will play a leading role in distributing RFC high-quality surimi products in Japan. We are confident that RFC products will be well received in the Japanese market and that this joint operation will continue to grow.”
Pacific Rim Group, a major supplier of pollock, herring, and snow crab, has offices in Germany, Singapore, and China, and is responsible for the sales and marketing of around 230,000 MT of fish and 2,500 MT of live crab annually.
Photo courtesy of Russian Fishery Company
