A NEWLY proposed Asian tuna company will soon begin its operations in the country.
Frabelle Fishing Corp from the Philippines promised to provide thousands of job opportunities.
The Company’s Liaison Officer Dale Sacay in an interview with Solomon Star yesterday said all the plannings and logistics have already being planned out.
“All the plans are already in place and all the machineries are just awaiting the green light to be shifted here,” Mr Sacay said.
He added that they have already applied to the Foreign Investment Board (FIB) and held high level talks with the government and the Guadalcanal provincial government of their interest to invest in the country.
Mr Sacay added that the company is planning to start its operations this year.
He said they would be setting up their multi-million dollar tuna processing plant on Guadalcanal.
The Solomon Star understands that the proposed area will be somewhere around the Tenaru area.
He said the facility would be designed to process cooked frozen loin for export and canned tuna for the local and export market.
The plant has the capacity to process 100 tonnes of raw materials per day and finished product of about 45% of cooked frozen tuna.
The initial equipment capacity will only process 20 tonnes per eight-hour shift. This will go up to 40 tonnes on two shifts.
“We will also be doing our own tin can manufacturing and printing. Fish meal plant to take care of fish discards is now in place,” he said.
Frabelle’s export markets are in American Samoa, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Thailand to name a few.
In 2006 they have also built a US$1.5 million tuna processing plant in PNG.
Meanwhile, the Earth Island Institute has also established ties with the Asian company in a move to monitor their operations.
Earth Island’s Regional Director Lawrence Makili has welcomed and praised the Asian company’s initiative to work in partnership with them.
“This is something the government needs to understand because such partnership is important so that we can monitor companies so that they don’t make use of our resources especially our dolphins,” he said.
Mr Makili added that the company showed that they were serious about investing in the country.
By DOUGLAS MARAU
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