Russian PM outlining new incentives to speed up development of Kuril Islands

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who on Monday, July 26, 2021 began a working trip to the Far East and Siberia, visited the Yasny fish processing complex on Iturup Island, reports Megafishnet.com.

According to TASS, the enterprise employing 600 people has a production capacity of 500 tons of finished products per day. The assortment of finished products includes: pink salmon, frozen chum salmon, frozen salmon roe, salted salmon caviar.

The company has a deep-water berth that allows handling vessels with a displacement of up to 7 thousand tons. The length of the berth is 80 m, the depth is up to 7.5 m.

In April 2020, a plant for the production of feed quality fishmeal, which is obtained during the processing of fish production waste, was launched on the territory of the complex. The processing capacity is about 150 tons of raw material per day, which allows to get about 30 tons of finished products, as well as 11 tons of fish oil from salmonids or about 6 tons from pollock.

Fishmeal is used for making feed for livestock, fish and pets, for fertilizing the soil, sometimes in the food industry (it is added to seasonings, chips, pates, canned food, semi-finished products).

Kuril Islands fish sector

More than 40 enterprises are engaged in the harvesting and processing of aquatic biological resources on the Kuril Islands, the sector employing more than 3 thousand people. This is about 33% of the total number of people working in the fishing industry of the Sakhalin region.

Last year the fishery enterprises registered on the territory of the Kuril Islands harvested about 352 thousand tons of aquatic biological, which accounted for 50% of the total volume in the Sakhalin region.

Now significant investments are being directed to the development of the fisheries complex of the Kuril Islands. With these funds, the businesses are expanding the fleet, modernizing production and building salmon ranching plants.

During the visit to the area PM Mishustin announced broad new measures to develop the islands including a free customs zone, comprehensive tax reliefs, large subsidies and big infrastructure projects.