The agreement will enable the company to supply Salvadoran tilapia farmers with high quality tilapia fingerlings, featuring the latest and improved genetics from one of the most advanced tilapia breeding programmes in the world.
© Spring Genetics
Spring Genetics, a leading tilapia breeder based in Miami, is dedicated to the genetic improvement of Nile tilapia. Their strain is marketed under the Spring Tilapia brand, which has been selected over 19 generations for key commercial traits such as fast growth, survivability, disease resistance and fillet yield. It is also the only tilapia strain with improved resistance to Streptococcus agalactiae and Streptococcus iniae.
Acceso El Salvador, built by the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP), sources tilapia, other fish and seafood, as well as fruits and vegetables, from smallholders. The company employs a marine biologist and aquaculture technicians dedicated to the production of tilapia who work closely with its network of fish farmers.
The new partnership meets a growing need in El Salvador for high-quality fingerlings, where the country’s rapid growth in tilapia production is fuelled by increasing market demand. However, according to Acceso El Salvador, this accelerated increase has not occurred in a technologically advanced manner, and small and medium-scale producers suffer from various issues affecting productivity, including quality of fingerlings, production capacity and diseases. Additionally, the current tilapia value chain is extremely fragmented with several levels of intermediation, meaning that producers typically earn less than 25 percent of the final product value.
Acceso El Salvador looks to solve these issues by working along the entire tilapia value chain from providing quality fish inputs – through its partnership with Guatemalan company ARECA which implements Best Aquaculture Practices – to increasing tilapia fillet sizes, to ensuring the freshness and quality of fish delivered to supermarkets. Acceso El Salvador is also planning to soon build a new fish processing plant that will include a modern bio-secure fingerling hatchery and expand its tilapia processing capacity.
“We are thrilled to partner with Spring Genetics and serve as sole distributor of their unique tilapia fingerlings in El Salvador. We look forward to providing our clients with the highest quality tilapia fingerlings and tilapia for production and consumption,” said Andres Baiza, Acceso El Salvador’s general manager.
“We are excited to be bringing the most advanced tilapia breeding programme to El Salvador through our exclusive distribution agreement with Acceso El Salvador. We are impressed with their operations, and they are well-positioned to serve the fingerling needs of the local market,” said Hideyoshi Segovia-Uno, commercial and operations manager for Spring Genetics.
