More details revealed on Chinese fishing venture
In last week’s Times, we announced plans by the Chinese fishing company, China Southern Fishery (Shenzen) Co Ltd (CSFC) a subsidiary of Luen Thai Fishing Venture Ltd, to establish a foreign invested company to operate a shore side fishery operation on Rarotonga which will by early next year, provide 60 jobs for locals and pump around $7.5 million into the local economy. This will be achieved over two phases with phase one to commence this month and phase two early next year.
The Times can also reveal further details of the company’s intentions. The information has been kindly provided by Casey Yu of Luen Thai and Matthew Wang of CSFC.
-The company intends to co-operate fully with our government.
-Due to the limitation of onshore facilities, the company will temporarily station a 500 metric tonne frozen carrier at Rarotonga for cold storage until land facilities are developed. The intention is to blast freeze the tuna to minus 60 degrees.
-A frozen carrier will be brought in on a monthly basis for transshipping the frozen tuna. This will require sufficient vessels to increase catch volume.
-Once the shore side operation is established, the company hopes our government will encourage all licensed vessels to offload at Rarotonga to support the shore side operations and other economic developments.
-In order for the shore side operation to function to operate economically, the support of more than 20 fishing vessels is desired. In the company’s experience, generally 30-40 vessels are an ideal number to make the shore side operations successful. The company hold 8 licenses.
-Due to the shortage of fuel supply to the northern group, the company is seeking a solution to supplying diesel fuel to vessels at economical prices as well as delivering fuel to the outer islands.
-The company seeks a long term relationship with our government. -Charles Pitt

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