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Losses lead to sale of tra processing plants
Many tra fish processing plant owners are now advertising to sell their businesses, a result of the bitter losses that tra fish farmers have been enduring over the last two years. Hopes that tra exports would recover by the end of 2009 have all but expired.
The death of tra fish ponds means that a lot of fish processing lines and processing plants have to shut down or be sold.
It’s not easy to find buyers
Luan, the owner of Binh Minh tra fish processing plant in Dong Thap, has advertised to sell his business.
He has offered the 50 tons per day processing plant at 55 billion dong. There are no buyers yet.
Because many farmers have given up tra farming, feed factories have suffered. Sa Dec Industrial Zone (IZ) in Dong Thap province now has nearly 20 factories that produce feed for tra fish. Most have been operating since 2003, but now many have stopped operation or been put on sale.
Khanh, Director of the Minh Quan Company in Dong Thap Province, has announced that he is selling the tra feed processing workshop in Sa Dec IZ.
Other sources list Sao Xanh and Kien Thanh as also for sale. Viet Thang factory has already been sold to Hung Vuong.
A Dong Thap tra processing plant owner recalled the golden age of tra fish back in 2003. At that time, tra was as valuable as gold, priced at 17,000-18,000 dong per kilogram. Farmers could make fat profits of several thousand dong per kilogram. Some farmers earned hundreds of billions of dong after just one crop.
The large profits prompted investors to build processing plants. Most of the plants had a small capacity, built by tra farmers themselves. After earning money from bountiful fish crops, the farmers also borrowed money from banks to build the plants.
However, with their lack of experience, the farmers-plant owners could not sell products directly to foreign partners and relied on bigger seafood export companies. Vietnam had 200 fish export companies in that period, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).
Only 25 percent of exporters had processing plants; the remaining exporters rented plants to process and package for export. Yet the companies have given up starting in early 2008, when the export market narrowed in the global economic crisis, making small workshops miserable.
vietnamnet, sgtt
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