Good potential for fish processing in the Russian Far East

The development of the fish processing industry in the Russian Far East has gathered a good momentum with several big projects in the pipeline to radically change the current raw material bias in favour of more added value in the next few years, reports Megafishnet.com.

According to VARPE (All-Russia Association of Fisheries Enterprises, Entrepreneurs and Exporters), four fish processing projects worth 930 million rubles with a total capacity of about 165 tons per day are to be put into operation by residents of the free Port of Vladivostok in the period from the second quarter of 2021 to the third quarter of 2024.

Another 23 projects at the Advanced Development Territories of the Russian Far East are going through various stages of implementation such as business planning, equipment purchase, design, construction and installation. Their total production capacity should exceed 3 thousand tons per day with the investments to hit almost 11 billion rubles. The launch of the facilities is to occur over the next few years from the early 2021 to the second quarter of 2025.

According to VARPE head German Zverev, it would take from three to five years to create a full-fledged onshore infrastructure for fish processing. This includes not only buildings and production lines, but also berthing and refrigeration facilities.

Given the pace of development of the industry over the past four years, market participants expect that this potential has every chance to be implemented as planned.

According to VARPE, in 2016, the value of fixed assets of Far Eastern enterprises in the field of processing and preserving fish and seafood amounted to 14 billion rubles jumping to 29 billion rubles in 2020. At the same time, the coefficient of renewal of fixed assets accelerated from 14% in 2016 to 40% by the end of 2020, and the degree of depreciation of fixed assets, on the contrary, decreased from 29% in 2016 to 9% last year.