“Once we have completed the acquisition of new land for aquaculture, we are hoping to increase the production to about 1,200 to 1,500 tonnes per year,” Golden Corp.’s Managing Director Richard Chuang Hsi Shan said in yesterday’s interview with The Brunei Times.
Mr Chuang said acquiring new land for its shrimp farm is in line with the company’s thrust to increase annual production to 3,000 tonnes within the next two to three years.
The company is currently processing about 60 tonnes of shrimp per month and exports to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
Mr Chuang said that exports in 2013 rose by about 30 per cent from 2012.
In a report published last year by the Oxford Business Group (OBG), Faizal Md Ya’akub, deputy managing director of Semaun Holdings, Golden Corporation’s partner, said that Brunei does not have a problem gaining market access in Korea, Japan and China. But they can hardly supply the growing demand.
“We need to fully utilise the 230 ha of ponds in the country using various technologies to increase our national yields, ” he said.
Mr Faizal said they were looking for foreign partners who will help them with their production through investment seminars and regional road shows.
“As much as possible we want to produce sashimi-grade prawns, which the Korean and Japanese markets have asked us to produce for them,” Faizal said in the OBG report.
In a 2010 report, Mr Chuang said that one of the challenges the firm faces was the domestic farmers’ failure to comply with the company’s standards on quality. Chuang added that local farmers also had to supply the local market, limiting the volume they supply to his company.
“So if we can find farmers who can supply us with a steady amount of blue shrimp then I think that won’t be a problem,” he said in the 2010 report.
Golden Corp is Brunei’s leading producer of seafood-related products and is the first company to produce organic feed and breed organic blue shrimp.
It operates the Multi-Purpose Marine Resources Processing and Business Centre - the only fully-integrated producer of seafood products in Brunei. The facility, which commenced operations last June 2012, is the result of a collaboration between Semaun Marine Resources Sdn Bhd and Golden Corporation.
Golden Corp also provides assistance and technical know-how to local shrimp and fish aqua-farmers.
