Fresh and frozen exports to Japan

Kilic Seafood is synonymous with the Turkish fish farming sector. The company is fully integrated producing at all stages of the farmed seafood value chain. The main production is seabass, seabream, meagre, and rainbow trout. In addition to on-growing facilities for farmed fish, Kilic has hatcheries, feed production units, packaging facilities and processing factories producing a range of sophisticated items. Since 2015 the company has also been farming tuna, on-growing the fish in cages in the sea off Karaburun near Izmir.

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With a production of 50,000 tonnes of fish including seabass, seabream, trout, and meagre, Kilic Seafood is the biggest seafood company in Turkey. In recent years, it has also been establishing production activities in other parts of the world. In Albania, for example, it has started farming trout, while in Mauritania it has established a fishmeal and fish oil factory using the locally available raw material. In the Dominican Republic trials on seabass are being carried out and discussions are on-going with the authorities in Morocco and Tunisia to establish production facilities there. While activities are being established outside Turkey, operations within the country are not standing still either, says Sinan Kiziltan, vice president of the executive board of Kilic Holding. The fish retail shop at the corporate headquarters site on the Milas Bodrum highway now includes a fast food outlet, that serves freshly prepared fast food to motorists. But perhaps most significant, among the latest ventures the company has embarked on, is tuna farming.

Japan absorbs most tuna from the Mediterranean

Tuna farming or ranching is widespread in the Mediterranean with companies in many countries around the Mediterranean, including Croatia, Italy, Spain, Malta, as well as Turkey. Operators catch the young bluefin tuna in the wild, transport the fish to cages and fatten them for the market. Almost all the fish is intended for Japan, where bluefin tuna is very popular and commands high prices. The industry is dependent however on young fish caught from the wild as tuna hatcheries on a commercial scale do not yet exist despite the enormous interest in the fish. ICCAT, an international body charged with the conservation and management of tuna stocks in the Mediterranean, issues annual quotas to countries, where authorities in turn distribute them to the industry.

Operations controlled from vessel-based office

Kilic is a relative newcomer to the field of tuna farming. Other Turkish companies have been in the business for many years, but Kilic has a long and successful track record in the fish farming and processing industries, and on-growing tuna is therefore a logical extension of these activities. At Karaburun, a natural reserve near Izmir, where permanent structures are forbidden, a vessel is anchored that functions as the office as well as the control centre for the tuna farming activities. The fishing for tuna is from the middle of May to the middle of June, says Hasan Yilmaz, the farm manager, and the first batch of tuna that Kilic obtained was purchased from Turkish tuna fishermen. The fishers sell the fish to the farming companies because the price they can get is better than what they would receive for selling it on the market. In addition, tuna fishermen typically do not have the facilities necessary to process the fish and sell it.

The fish have to be captured live however and then transferred very slowly from the catching site to the area where the on-growing cages are located. This could be a distance of several hundred kilometres and tuna being a sensitive fish needs to be handled very carefully if it is to make the trip successfully within the confines of the towing cage. Tuna captured this way have to be a minimum of 30 kg in weight, but Mr Yilmaz tries to buy fish that are larger. The target weight for the on-growing process is at least 60 kg but the company would like to enter the market with at least 1,000 tonnes of fish. The main export market for tuna is Japan, which absorbs some 98% of the exported tuna. But producers are also legally obliged to place some of their production on the domestic market as part of a government effort to popularise fish and boost its consumption.

Efforts on-going to close the breeding cycle

As in other parts of the world, at Kilic too efforts are on-going to close the cycle of tuna farming, that is to grow fish from eggs produced in captivity. This is already being done at a university in Japan, but commercial hatcheries, where tuna larvae are hatched from eggs obtained from captive fish and can successfully develop into adults, are some way from being established. Researchers at Kilic have conducted some trials, but further work is needed. The young fish are captured in the Mediterranean in the area encapsulated between Anatalya, Hatay, and Cyprus and are then towed to the Aegean Sea. The vessels have to have ICCAT observers on board. In fact, observers are involved in every operation says Mr Yilmaz, capture, towing, transfer, and harvest. Mr Yilmaz, who has been in the business for 15 years says that Kilic has its own fishing vessels, but not enough capacity to meet the requirements of the farm. The company is therefore buying tuna from other fishermen as well and in the future may also approach other countries’ fishermen to fulfil its needs.

Kilic more than doubles grading and packaging capacity New facility goes on stream In October 2016 Kilic opened at its Mugla site a new packaging facility for seabass, seabream, and meagre with two lines and a total capacity of 150 tonnes per day. Using state of the art machinery the fish is automatically graded by weight into boxes. Weight classes are selected depending on the customer’s requirements, for example 300-400 g, 400-600 g, 600-800 g etc. The packaging too is determined by the customer – the facility offers 20 options, enough to satisfy even the most demanding client. Fish packaged here is exported to more than 55 countries around the world, says Melis Sakaoglu, a marketing executive, a lot of it to the UK, Italy, and Spain. The packaged fish is stored in refrigerated chambers for a maximum of three days before being loaded into trucks and distributed. Typically, the fish can be harvested, processed, and released for distribution within a 24-hour period. Bad weather, however, can disrupt the schedule and prolong this period. The new facility more than doubles the company’s grading and packaging capacity from 100 to 250 tonnes per day.