The Fisheries Ministry has decided to launch this industry and private companies have expressed willingness to start inland fish canning ventures in the island as it has high local and foreign demand.
The inland fisheries industry has been encouraged to produce more inland fish stocks to cater the requirement of processing canned food for local consumption in the initial stage.
Six companies have agreed to set up inland fish processing factories using infrastructure facilities provided by the government, the Fisheries Ministry announced.
Accordingly, they will be purchasing inland fish stocks obtained from inland fish breeding tanks countrywide, the ministry said.
The setting up of state of the art fish processing facilities will bring in new technologies to this country.
According to the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, canned fish imports from January to November 2019 was LKR 12,940 million. When considering the equivalent in foreign exchange it is an amount easily saved.
The president of the Canned Fish Manufacturers Association of Sri Lanka (CFMASL), Shiran Fernando said that the local consumption of canned fish is around 200,000 cans per day.
This amount can be increased if better quality products are available in the market.
With a level playing field, the local entrepreneurs have ample capacity to meet the total demand though they get little or no help at the moment.
At present on average, around 10000 cans are manufactured daily among five canning factories working under capacity.
Leave your comments
Login to post a comment
Post comment as a guest