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INCORPORATING COLD CHAIN
Oceana creates more employment for fishing communities
Oceana Group, South Africa’ s largest fishing company, continues to import frozen pilchards to meet local demand, providing continued employment for over 1 390 seasonal workforce throughout the year.
Oceana’ s Lucky Star brand of canned pilchards is a market leader in its category and accounts for approximately three million meals per day in South Africa. To achieve the company’ s objective of ensuring food security for the nation, Oceana has increased its production capacity to provide cost effective, high protein meals to more families throughout the country.
Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, pilchards offer a healthy and nutritious alternative protein source to beef, pork or chicken— all of which are expected to increase in price as one of South Africa’ s worst droughts continues to affect the agricultural sector.
The availability of this ocean resource is not sufficient to meet local demand. To make up for the shortfall in local supply, Oceana imports frozen pilchards from Morocco and Thailand for value added processing in its canneries at St Helena Bay and Laaiplek in the Western Cape.
This year the South African total allowable catch( TAC) for pilchards is 23 % less than last year, which would potentially have resulted in the reduction of working hours. However, the processing of frozen pilchards has enabled Oceana to provide year-round employment for about 1 390 employees who would otherwise have remained seasonal workers. Furthermore, it has resulted in cannery offal being channelled through to the fishmeal plant and processed into fishmeal and oil, resulting in additional hours of work for its workforce.
“ Our determination to meet consumer demand prompted us to start importing frozen pilchards. While still relying heavily on our local quota, our production has been enhanced by the importing of additional product,” comments Oceana CEO, Francois Kuttel.
“ Processing of our local pilchard quota can guarantee our cannery staff employment for only between two and three months of the year and meets less than 50 % of the local demand for this staple favourite of many South Africans,” adds Kuttel.
Since 2014, Oceana has created more than 300 weeks of additional employment in the canneries, and have ensured year-round employment for formerly seasonal staff who are now not only paid a basic wage, but also enjoy benefits such as overtime, pension fund contributions, seasonal bonuses, and a production bonus.
Oceana has invested an additional R10-million in the Laaiplek facility to process a greater quantity of frozen fish; currently the majority of imported frozen pilchards is processed in the St Helena Bay facility. The
Oceana Group
The Laaiplek facility where Oceana invested R10-million to process more frozen fish. |
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annual imports of frozen pilchards translate to an economic injection of nearly R200- million in wages and in services procured in both St Helena Bay and Laaiplek.
Kuttel adds,“ The drop in our currency’ s exchange rate against the US dollar means that we are paying more for imported canned pilchards than ever before, which is putting some pressure on our bottom line. On the flipside, the high US dollar exchange rate has meant that it is now possible for us to import frozen product and undertake the entire canning process in our own facilities, instead of importing the canned product, which was certainly more feasible
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much stronger. Given the high demand for this cost effective protein source, it is likely that we will increase the amount of frozen pilchard imported in the future, which will create additional employment opportunities in these fishing communities.
“ The Oceana Group is committed to sustainable jobs for our entire workforce, especially for the formerly seasonal workers who can our pilchards. By importing frozen pilchards we are providing job security for our staff, as well as ensuring food security for the millions of South Africans who count on Lucky Star pilchards to provide a healthy, cost effective source of protein,”
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in the past when the exchange rate was |
concludes Kuttel. |
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