Brothers Salim and Marwouen Jenhani are the co-owners of Kélibia, Tunisia, based Groupe Jenhani.
The company was founded by their father, Hafedh Jenhani, more than 50 years ago. He started by selling fresh fish brought into a small port in northeastern Tunisia, renowned for its seafood.
In 2005, after taking over day-to-day operations, the brothers embarked upon a major expansion of the company, constructing a new processing facility with modern freezing capabilities. Now the company handles more than 2,000 metric tons of seafood annually, exports to five countries – Spain, Italy, Greece, Canada, and Algeria – and has sales of TND 7 million (USD 2.3 million, EUR 2.1 million). It works with a range of products including sardines, octopus, cuttlefish, squid, langoustine, red shrimp, pink shrimp, and tiger shrimp.
A family touch has been crucial to the company’s success, which he said is built upon warm personal relations with business partners forged over decades by his father. But now, Salim and Marouen said they want to grow the company bigger and faster, and they’re thinking about building a bigger factory and expanding their exports and species offerings.
The brothers acknowledged that those ambitions are running into an increasingly frequent problem that has them thinking twice – overfishing leading to reduced local catches in Kélibia.
“Every year it's getting less and less. It's not like even 10 years ago now,” Jenhani said. “It has been tougher lately. People don't respect the rules for fishing and they fish out of season. So [we] face the question of how do [you] grow when [we’re facing] the problem overfishing and less fish are coming out of the water. It’s hard.”
Jenhani called on the Tunisian government to better enforce fishing rules in order to ensure fairness and sustainability.
“I hope the government can be more strict about this,” he said. “It's not in our hands, but they should do something about this problem.”
Photo courtesy of Cliff White/SeafoodSource
