Frime President and Owner Salvador Ramon is on a mission to take the tuna industry to the next level.
Barcelona, Spain-based Frime, founded in 1977, specializes in yellowfin tuna products imported from all over the world. Ramon, the third generation of his family to run the business, told SeafoodSource during Seafood Expo Global – running from 23 to 25 April in Barcelona, Spain – Frime is now distributing its products to 16,000 supermarkets in countries across Europe.
“In the year 2000, we had 10 people in the company. Now, we have 700 people working in Barcelona,” Ramon said.
Ramon said Frime has seven different factories in Barcelona where it processes tuna into a range of different products, with a specialization in loins and slices. The company produces a range of ready-to-eat products, including marinated products.
“We have the biggest plant and tuna processing in Europe, here in Barcelona, all using robotics and all automatic,” Ramon said. “In tuna, we are the only company in Europe now that can sell marinated tuna that is ready-to-eat.”
In the last two years, Frime has also begun to expand into the U.S., using Camanchaca as a distributor.
“We are very happy because the customer in North America ... used to use the Vietnam or Asian-processed loins, and they are starting to love the value of the product we are doing here in Europe," Ramon said.
Ramon said that one of the big advantages Frime it has over other processing companies is its heavy emphasis on technology, which he said helps it create a superior product. He said the company’s robotic processing equipment, which uses artificial intelligence, allows it to process tuna into extremely consistent products.
“We put a lot of money into these new technologies that normally in the fish business nobody uses, because it’s a very traditional industry,” Ramon said. “We industrialized some processes with our own engineering.”
The result is Frime can get more ...
