Nghi Tan develops seafood processing

(Baonghean) - Arriving at Nghi Tan (Cua Lo Town), trucks carrying fish from all over the place are bustling to the cold storage warehouses in the ward. Trucks are coming and going all day long. Every day, hundreds of tons of fish of all kinds are collected and brought to the craft village for processing and preservation, and vice versa, tons of fish from the cold storage system here are exported to consume in and outside the province.

Nghi Tan craft village people transport fish for consumption

In 1991, after being demobilized and returning to his hometown, Mr. Huong became a fish trader, often going to Hai Phong and the southern provinces to buy fish to sell to mountainous districts in the province and the northern mountainous provinces. During the process of collecting fish, there were often large reserves of fish that could not be consumed in time, often spoiled, reducing profits. Mr. Huong realized that he needed to build a freezer to preserve fish, stocking fish all year round, so that when the sea was rough or stormy, the boats could not go to sea, there would still be fish to sell to the market. In 2000, Mr. Huong decided to invest capital to build a freezer. Every year, from April to August of the lunar calendar is the southern fish season, and from September to December is the northern fish season. Fishermen catch a lot of fish and cannot sell all the fresh fish in a short time, so Mr. Huong buys them and freezes them to gradually sell, reducing losses for fishermen and ensuring business profits for his family.

In addition to purchasing fish at the wharves in the province, his family often goes to Thanh Hoa, Quang Binh, Quang Ngai... to collect fish and bring them back to freeze. Currently, Mr. Huong's family has 3 freezers, supplying 20-30 tons of fish per day, and each year storing 400 tons of various types of fish in the warehouse, supplying the domestic market for consumption throughout the country. Each time the fish is brought to the provinces of Dien Bien, Lai Chau, Son La, Lao Cai... his family's freezer truck always carries 4-5 tons of fish per trip. Thanks to long-standing business relationships, the fish source is mainly imported wholesale to large sources, with favorable input and output, helping Mr. Huong's family's seafood business to develop more and more smoothly, creating jobs for 10 regular workers with a salary of 4 million VND/person/month.

The seafood processing and preservation village in Block 6 - Nghi Tan Ward has 31 cold storages, specializing in the production and frozen trading of about 8,000 tons of seafood. The households in the profession all have many years of experience, unite, support each other and have many innovations in production and business to promote the profession to develop more and more. Going back to the 1990s, at that time, the people of Nghi Tan Ward mainly worked in fishing, exploiting seafood, processing fish sauce, drying, steaming and grilling all kinds of fish to sell at markets in the province. From 1992 to 2000, many households exploiting sea fish and trading seafood switched to the business of iced fish, transported by refrigerated trucks and foam trucks. The goods were purchased from the northern provinces such as Thanh Hoa, Hai Phong, Quang Ninh, and the southern provinces including: Quang Binh, Vung Tau, Kien Giang, Ca Mau. Initially, when switching to the frozen seafood business, people encountered many difficulties due to long transportation distances, lack of means of transportation, limited partners and customers, etc. In the process of trading frozen seafood, there were many passive situations between people who went fishing and traders. Fishermen caught a lot of fish but the consumption was too slow, sometimes the ships docked 2-3 days later before the goods could be consumed. From this reality, the seafood businesses in the craft village boldly changed their business structure to processing and preserving seafood using freezers and cold storage.

In the early days, there were only 2-3 cold storage warehouses initiated by Mr. Hoang Huu Sum and Mr. Vo Van Son for business and production. From there, seeing the effectiveness of the profitable cold storage model, local people began to replicate this method. Many families boldly invested billions of dong to build warehouses and business locations convenient for processing and preserving seafood. Cold storage warehouses always have abundant reserves, helping to stabilize prices without causing market fluctuations. At the same time, creating jobs for local workers and neighboring areas; bringing the household economy of those working in the profession to remarkable growth. Many poor and average households have become quite rich, building high-rise buildings, buying cars, making the infrastructure of the ward increasingly spacious.

Up to now, there are 119 households participating in the craft with a total investment value of basic construction and equipment of about 100 billion VND. The total production value of the craft village reaches over 183 billion VND/year, of which the production value by profession of the village is over 175 billion VND/year. The craft village creates regular jobs for 300 people and more than 1,000 seasonal workers; at the same time, it contributes to increasing the budget revenue for the locality. The most important thing is that the establishment of the Craft Village for preserving and processing seafood in Block 6 - Nghi Tan Ward has become a place to consume the output of products of fishermen caught from the sea, no matter how much fish there is, these frozen warehouses "eat" it all, limiting the situation of price pressure that causes disadvantages for fishermen, creating motivation for people to feel secure to stay at sea for a long time to exploit a lot of seafood, increasing the value of income.

Mr. Le Van Phu - Vice Chairman of Nghi Tan Ward People's Committee excitedly said: Craft villages play an important role in the local economic development, contributing approximately 200 million VND to the budget each year, accounting for 20% of the total budget revenue of the ward. To promote the production and business activities of the craft village, the locality has created a legal corridor for the development of the craft village, and at the same time built the operating regulations of the craft village, including ensuring environmental sanitation, unifying input and output prices, and labor rental prices, to avoid the situation of competing for buying and selling. Speed ​​up the process of granting land use right certificates to create conditions for people with mortgaged assets to borrow capital. At the same time, create conditions for craftsmen to access preferential capital to create jobs from the Bank for Social Policies. In order for the craft village to develop more and more strongly in the following years, Nghi Tan Ward has a plan to allocate land to plan to move all frozen warehouses to concentrated production areas, separate from residential areas to ensure the environment and ensure traffic.

With the favorable mechanisms of Nghi Tan ward and the efforts and creativity in production and business of the households doing the job, surely in the future the seafood processing and preservation craft village here will develop strongly, increasing income for the people.

Quynh Lan