Business View Caribbean | Jan 2019

24 ALGIX JAMAICA LIMITED according to Thompson. He explains, “A lot of our distributors also import fish from other countries to sell. That is one form of competition. There are also some smaller farms that produce tilapia, but none producing basa or shrimp. For those two species, we have no competitors. One of our advantages is, if you get into the fresh market there isn’t much competition because the importers bring in a frozen product, whereas, we are able to supply fresh, or freshly frozen, to the hotels and the local trade. Each of our distributors gives us their packaging material, we package into their containers, and they use refrigerated trucks to move it to different locations.” Much of the imported seafood, other than tilapia, comes into Jamaica duty-free from CARICOM countries, such as Guyana, Belize, and Suriname. “It’s something we have to live with,” says Thompson. “One way of dealing with it is by selling fresh product. The other major challenge we face is the high security expense. Because we have a valuable product in open ponds, we need security 24 hours per day, and that is pretty costly. On the positive side, finding workers is not difficult. There are more people seeking employment than what we can employ.” The freshwater shrimp operation is only a few months old. Before looking into any other product expansion, the company wants to Blast Freezer inspeced by Plant Manager