Its farms are well off the beaten path and far from a port, but a tilapia producer and processor in a remote Chinese region is betting on government financing and demand from the school dinner system to deliver it a profitable niche in the seafood sector.
Yunnan Xin Hai Feng Aquatic Group, which claims to export to the U.S. and Europe, has set up its tilapia farms in villages accross Yunnan Province, a hilly region bordering Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The firm has expanded using a loan from the local office of the China Export Import Bank, with the credit issued “to provide an alternative livelihood” to 20,000 peasants who lost their land in the construction of 22 hydropower stations in Mojiang county bordering Laos, according to a statement from the bank.
The loan was used to buy tilapia fry and pond set-up inputs, and the Xin Hai Feng output will be exported, according to the bank, which is one of China's "policy banks" lending domestically and internationally according to government policy priorities.
Meanwhile, company chairman Wang Ru Zhi has used his government connections to make tilapia a bigger part of China’s provincial school meals system. Representatives of Xin Hai Feng met recently met with the heads of catering for all of the province’s major universities and the middle school sector, with the goal of convincing them that tilapia can be used as "a healthy, safe, and nutritious staple" in school cafeterias. The meeting overseen by the deputy head of the provincial People’s Congress, Li Pei Ying, who has backed the tilapia firm as a source of income for the province‘s impoverished rural villages.
While transport is the largest challenge for tilapia producers seeking national market share, the government’s backing of major infrastructure links with Southeast Asia under the national One Belt One Road blueprint has opened up opportunities for them.
Photo courtesy of Yunnan Xin Hai Feng Aquatic Group
