Update on Khanh Hoa province's Tuna Industry

 

Khanh Hoa has always been associated with sea bays such as Cam Ranh – Ba Ngoi, Van Phong, and wonderful beaches such as Nha Trang, Dam Mon, Doc Let, Dai Lanh. It is said that the sea brings most of the fortune for her local inhabitants. Just look at her tourism, shipping and shipbuilding, fisheries, aquaculture, fish processing. These industries attract lots of people and bring wealth to investors. Many other neighbouring provinces envy Khanh Hoa for her endowed natural beauty and privileged situation.  

 

As far as tuna are concerned, Khanh Hoa is one of the provinces in the southern central part of Vietnam where tuna is one of the main catches. The tuna fishery has contributed significantly to Khanh Hoa's seafood exports, which totalled US$240 million in 2005. It is estimated that during the peak season from February until August, more than 300 fishing boats to land about 20.000 tons of all kind of tunas: skipjack, little tunny, bullet tuna, longtail, yellowfin, and bigeye. Some go to the fish markets while the main volume goes to the processors and canneries.

 

But at the moment, there is only one tuna cannery in Khanh Hoa, United Resources Cannery belonging to Ursa Major Co. The cannery equipment is quite modern with complete canning line manufacturing all kinds of cans, from consumer’s size of 100 grs, 170 grs, 185 grs until catering size of 2 kgs. The capacity is more than one container per day. The cannery is EU-accredited, with FCE and every SID for every product. The company also participates in the Dolphin Safe Tuna Monitoring Program initiated by Earth Island Institute.

 

We visited United Resources Cannery at the time of production. First, the fish is taken from the cold stores where they are kept at the temperature of -18oC to the receipt area. Then they are thawed in running water, gilled, gutted and loaded into trays and taken to the precookers. After the fish backbone reaches the temperature of around 70oC, they are cooled and the workers clean the loins and the skin. The canning one is a totally automated step. All the empty cans are guided to the pack shapers where the loins are stuffed. After that the conveyors will lead the cans to liquid tanks of oil, water and sauce before the cans are seamed. After the process of sterilisation in the retorts, the cans are cooled, incubated and labelled. All steps are tightly supervised by experienced quality controllers.

 

Although the average Vietnamese consumes more seafood than meat the domestic market is of no significance to the local seafood companies. Buying power is simply too meagre for high-quality products. In addition to this, hardly anyone is interested in canned products, especially fish cans. Nearly most of the tuna canned products of United Resources Cannery are for export. They have landed in Japan, Korea, Russia, Mongolia, US, Italy, Germany and Britain. Ursa Major also owns another processor which produces frozen pre-cooked tuna loins.

 

The problem that United Resources Cannery constantly faces is the raw material. During the tuna season, it cannot purchase all the fish brought to the cannery, and there is no fish during the remaining months of the year. The cannery has to import the fish to fill in the shortage.

 

In the context of developing Khanh Hoa fisheries industry, an area of major focus is the improvement of infrastructure. According to cautious estimates about 20 to 30 per cent of catch value is lost due to a lack of transport facilities and cooling capacity. The losses are not only the result of direct spoilage but – and above all – of insufficient utilization of the latent value potential of the raw material. It is hoped that in the future these kinds of financial losses can be reduced.