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Cape Town – A small-scale aquaculture cooperative has sold its first batch of 'kabeljou' to three high-end seafood restaurants in the Western Cape.
The 277kg batch of dusky kob or ‘kabeljou’ was sold to Cape Town Fish Market’s V&A Waterfront branch, Southern Cross Seafood Deli and Wild Peacock Food Emporium in Stellenbosch.
The Siyazama Aquaculture Cooperative is situated in Hamburg, Eastern Cape and employs 21 people from the surrounding community.
The farm forms part of the broader Operation Phakisa project with which the government seeks to tap the economic potential of South Africa’s oceans.
Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Daff) spokesperson, Palesa Mokomele, told Fin24 that the business model was based on the combination of oyster and kob farming.
The carrying capacity of the kob farm was R1.2m and of the oysters farm R4m, she said.
The fish were processed at the Oceanwise processing facility where they were weighed, gilled and gutted then repackaged for retailers.
Liam Ryan, Managing Director of Oceanwise said that “enthusiasm from the community was encouraging and that the fish were of great quality as they experienced good growth and food conversion”.
According to Ryan the fish were growing at an average of 3.4g per day and were farmed over 201 days.
Southern Cross Seafood manager, Brian Coleman, was enthusiastic about his company’s order saying the fish were selling like ‘hotcakes’.
“It is awesome quality and the fish are farmed sustainably,” he told Fin24.
Siyazama’s fish were Sassi (Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative) approved and on the greenlist, said Coleman, which appealed to customers.
According to Coleman competition from other industry players was limited.
“Not many people are doing this thing ... they don’t have very much competition and their quality is good. I think it is the future if we want to go sustainable,” he said.
The Daff said it had taken the lead with industry on kob farming to share the risks associated with developing the ‘fairly new’ type of farming in South Africa.
According to Mokomele the initial investment was R13m for the capital and operational expenditure.
The stakeholders included the Daff, the Eastern Cape Development Cooperation, Ngqushwa Municipality, East London IDZ, Eastern Cape Department of economic development and environmental affairs, Eastern Cape Department of agriculture and rural development, Aspire (Amatole Municipality Development Agency), and Siyazama Aquaculture Cooperative.
The Daff has extended invites to aspiring and new aquaculture project owners to register their projects to become part of Operation Phakisa.
At the Operation Phakisa open day in 2014 President Jacob Zuma said the initiative "brought together teams from Government, labour, business, academia and other sectors to work together in experimental laboratories, to explore all possibilities and further unlock the potential of our country's vast coastline".
Research has shown that SA’s oceans economy had the potential to contribute up to R189bn to South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2033 and create about a million jobs.
