Shrimp Quality Key To Boosting Exports
By Debbie Too

Bandar Seri Begawan - Semaun Holdings Sdn Bhd and Golden Corporation Sdn Bhd are working to expand the reach of their efforts to assist farmers meet world-class standards in shrimp harvests.

The partner firms already have a few farms, such as those in Kg Telisai that have a combined farm area of 70 acres, working with them to achieve export quality Brunei Blue Prawns. Taken together, their harvests however are not enough to meet export volumes needed for Semaun to deliver purchase orders from buyers in Taiwan, "so we turn to other farmers", said Richard Chuang Hsi Shan, general manager of Semaun Marine Resources.

"But they don't want to do the partial harvesting," Chuang said, referring to the method that is necessary to ensure prawns are of export quality.

"To be successful, the farmers have to be patient and listen to our advice so that the shrimp will not have sand in their intestines," he said in an interview. "What happens quite often is that the shrimp gets hungry and starts to eat the sand at the bottom of the pond," he added, explaining that partial harvesting which involves releasing some of the prawns into a net where they are held near the top of the pond for a few hours to let the sand out of their system.

Not all farmers agree to this method and prefer to open the gates for all the shrimp to be harvested at once.

"This' is not good, maybe for the local wet market where customers don't mind, but in the export market ... it is a different story, the customers will complain," Chuang said.

He added that Brunei's prawn industry needs to keep improving the quality of its exports as it is becoming quite significant with an annual volume of 400 tonnes a year.

Everyone in the industry has to work together as a family and communicate to maintain set standards, he said.

Meanwhile, shrimp farmers in Brunei are finding it hard to maintain their farms and turn a profit at the same time, because of the cost of culturing the shrimp.

"Now due to an overproduction of shrimp in the global market, the price of shrimp is low, but in order for a farm to be successful, they must have all the adequate facilities in place," said Chuang.

He said that the farms might need to have enough financial support and facilities such as electricity; water supply and pumps should also be in place.

"Management of the farms is important, that's why we all have. to work together. Sometimes some farmers think that they can cut out some of the facilities to save cost but this is not the way," he said. Semaun Holdings owns part of Semaun Marine, while Golden Corp has holdings in a number of companies in the prawn industry.-- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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