Continental Seafood Export begins production

Tema (Greater Accra) - The Continental Seafood Exports, which has established a 1.5 million dollar plant to process seafood under the Free Zone programme for export, would soon be commissioned, Dr Asher Hakeny, Group Representative of Continental Group Corporation announced on Thursday.

He said the company would process fresh seafood and export to Europe, however, "our target is to enter the American markets in the shortest possible time".

Dr Hakeny was speaking to Mr Ishmael Ashietey, Minister of Fisheries and Mr Samuel Evans Ashong Narh, Tema Municipal Chief Executive, who paid familiarisation visit to the company, which is sited at Tema Light Industrial Area.

The company had initially employed 50 workers mostly girls, with two expatriates and intended to employ 100 more as the volume of production increased. Dr Hakeny said the production capacity of the plant was 12 tonnes per day, however, as a start, "we will produce 10 tonnes", adding we will procure our raw materials from Ghanaian fishermen.

The company has 60 metric tonnes installed capacity of cold stores and has a programme to bring in another machine. Dr Hakeny said in procuring their raw materials, the company would like to deal with fishermen directly and not through any middlemen and explained that this would enable the company to educate the fishermen on how to treat their fish catch, so that whatever fish they needed would be fresh for processing.

Dr Hakeny said the company would soon send samples of their products to their agents abroad to enable them to seek for markets and explore for more. The company's products for export would include full fish, fish filet, shrimps, lobsters and pawns and explained that they would be frozen and sent by air.

Mr Ashietey said the government was encouraging companies to add value to raw fish before export, so that they could get good prices abroad. "Ghana produces first class quality fish and that is why we embrace investors, who come to add value to fish before we export, since this can help to generate employment for the people," he said. Mr Ashietey urged the company to help the artesnal fishermen, who produced quality fish to sell directly to them so that they could get good price for their produce.