January 2019 Business View Caribbean

24 25 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 increase efficiencies and be as competitive in that sector as possible. The shrimp (macrobrachium rosenbergii), known locally as freshwater prawn, will be on the market in the next three months, and is of great interest to the hospitality industry. Thompson extols the exceptional partnership with Caribbean Producers, based in Montego Bay, as a key component of his company’s success. “They have partnered with us since the beginning in 2014. They supply all different products to the hotels, from wine, to utensils, to food, and they move most of our product.” Environmental sustainability is paramount to the aquaculture industry. Algix Jamaica operates under several licenses and permits, including one from the National Environmental Planning Agency. Algix is required to submit reports to them on a regular basis. Testing is done every fortnight. Thompson clarifies the procedure. “Basically, we take water from the Black River and we have to put it back into the river at the same standard. After using the water, we employ a treatment process that gets the water back into the environment safely, and with a good quality.We have to abide by those regulations and we are happy to do so.” When Algix originally acquired the fish farm, there was a similar operation in place. Today, the company is using the same natural filter technology– a tail reservoir that filters the water and allows sedimentation to take place, and also Blast Freezer inspeced by Plant Manager Fish feeding in the field