Sakhalin’s giant holding marking 30 years in business

Sakhalin-based biggest vertically integrated fishing and processing combine JSC "Gidrostroy" has marked 30 years in business, reports Megafishnet.com.

According to Sakhalin.info, the company got started in 1991 commissioning its first facility for frozen fish production in the Kuril Islands.

Now Gidrostroy Group is the largest onshore processor in the Russian Far East (RFE) annually processing 200 thousand metric tons of its catch in onshore establishments.

On the average, Gidrostroy employs 3,500 people on a full time basis at the production facilities and 1,500 more are additionally employed for the high fishing season every year.

The company began development from the island of Iturup to propagate later to Sakhalin and Shikotan.

Three years ago, the Preobrazhenskaya Trawl Fleet (located in Primorye about 200km from Vladivostok) also became part of the group.

Today, the holding has a powerful fishing fleet, modern fish processing factories and ranching stations to help reproduce the salmon stocks. The diversified enterprise carries out almost all types of activities: oceanic and inshore fishing, processing, storage and sale of fish products, restocking and construction. The key lines are salmon ranching (14 hatcheries) and ocean fishery.

The concern’s fleet consists of 20 large trawlers, all simultaneously conducting sea fishery with about 2,300 people employed in the fishing leg of the business.

Despite the difficult times the company continues a big modernization program for the fleet and the factories.

More than 80 large-scale facilities have been built and rebuilt over the years. In the social sphere, these are the airport, a hospital, a school, kindergartens, sports complexes, residential buildings and various facilities in the Kuril Islands. Roads are being built and reconstructed. People stopped leaving the area en masse.

And a relatively recent event: in 2019, the largest high-tech processing complex in Russia, Krabozavodsk, was commissioned on Shikotan. The company with a year-round production cycle breathed life into the village. The main types of products processed are iwashi, mackerel, pollock, cod and other species that are found in the local waters.