At Japan's 2023 Foodex show at the Tokyo Big Sight venue in 10 March, Andrew Rooney, the second-generation managing partner of Northern Ireland-based Rooney Fish, was on the lookout for a Japanese importer and distributor for his company's brown crab.
Aiming to diversify the markets in which he operates, Rooney set up shop at Foodex, Japan’s largest food exposition with over 73,000 visitors, he eventually found a partner in Godak Marketing.
The partnership between Tokyo-based Godak, a trading company specializing in high-end marine products, and Rooney centers on Irish crab “captured daily from fresh Irish coastal waters” and “famous for its large size, rich roe content, and its full, sweet flavor,” according to Rooney’s website.
Japan wasn’t the first spot Rooney aimed to export his company's brown crab. China was previously his biggest market, but Covid-era lockdowns, cargo space shortages, and strict inspections for cadmium led Rooney to explore the Japanese market as an alternative.
Godak, founded in 1995, brings expertise to the partnership in importing and distributing across Japan. Clearwater Seafoods is a major supplier to Godak, shipping Arctic surf clams out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, according to publicly available shipping export declaration records.
Even though Rooney’s crab offerings are now a staple of the company’s product line, this crustacean was not always its main focus. Rooney Fish used to specialize in langoustine and whelk – which he still sells in one-kilogram packs, which were on display at the 2023 Foodex. But Rooney began to offer brown crab simply out of the need to adapt to changing market conditions, he told SeafoodSource.
Established in 1975, Rooney Fish now operates a 6,000-square-meter plant quayside in Kilkeel, County Down, Northern Ireland, the same location where it began nearly 50 years ago.
Rooney's sales of whole langoustine, for which the company’s automated size grading line can handle 10 metric tons (MT) per day, have been limited, however, due to government policies that cut quotas and set exclusion zones to protect wind farm turbines and their electric cables. As a result, Rooney Fish began to handle less langoustine, leading the company to diversify into brown crab.
Continuing to adapt, it then saw an opportunity in lobster and established holding tanks where it could keep 2.5 MT of lobsters alive for four to five months. In 2014, the company also opened an oyster farm in Carlingford Lough, a sea inlet near Kilkeel, after customers requested the product. The oysters, sold under the brand name Millbay Oysters, undergo cultivation for three to four years before being harvested.
“We’ve won many awards for our oysters,” Rooney said, including a three-star Great Taste Award in 2021, the highest award possible in that category.
Today, the company’s product range includes langoustines, oysters, whelks, whole brown crabs, green crabs, velvet crabs, and lobsters. Rooney Fish has also moved upstream into catching, and it now operates a small fleet of fishing and processing vessels ranging in length from 10 meters to 26 meters.
Rooney’s quayside plant features nitrogen freezing, blast freezing, cooking facilities, cold storage, fully automated graders, and a variety of packing operations. It also has an in-house laboratory facility to ensure quality control and hygiene. This increase in both production capacity and product offerings has led to an expansion in its exports. Rooney Fish now sends its product to 15 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America.
Photo by Chris Loew/SeafoodSource
