Saudi Arabia has greatly increased its aquaculture output in the last few years, and now the country is working to help expand markets for its new products.
The country’s National Livestock and Fisheries Development Program is helping with that effort, and the organization hosted a pavilion at Seafood Expo Global – which ran from 25 to 27 April in Barcelona, Spain – for the first time in the show's history. The ultimate goal of hosting the pavilion, Abdulmajeed Saad Alshehri, the program’s institutional communication manager, told SeafoodSource, is to introduce some of the country’s new products to the world.
The country, Alshehri said, has been working to improve the rules for aquaculture production and has incentivized businesses to start new operations.
“In Saudi Arabia, we improve the rules for aquaculture, we improve the production, and we improve the exports to more than 35 countries from Asia, and Europe, and America,” Alshehri said. “In 2016, we only had 67 farms; now, we have more than 215 farms in Saudi Arabia, marine water and freshwater.”
The country now has 15 different aquaculture species raised via aquaculture and is preparing to develop a regional center for both fisheries and aquaculture.
Alshehri said that the country needs to do more to let the world know about its seafood products, especially given the increased output it has achieved thanks to its aggressive incentives. The country established a SAR 1.3 billion (then USD 347 million, EUR 309.8 million) in 2019, and the country has set an ambitious goal of increasing its aquaculture production to 600,000 metric tons by 2030.
The country has established markets in Asia, but Alshehri said it needs to do more to set up markets elsewhere – especially in Europe.
“I think absolutely we need to improve the marketing of products of Saudi Arabia to the world,” Alshehri said. “I think we have good products from Saudi Arabia ... we need to access all world markets.”
Photo by Chris Chase/SeafoodSource
