Kocaman Balikcilik is a third-generation family-owned company selling seafood and other products overseas and on the domestic market.
Kocaman Balikcilik is among the biggest producers and exporters of marine and freshwater products in Turkey. In addition, it is involved in joint ventures to farm tuna and to produce buttered snails.
Turkey is well known in Europe for its production and export of farmed seabass, seabream, and trout in a variety of forms. However, surrounded by the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, and with 8,500 km of coastline, the country also has a significant production of wild marine species including finfish, crustaceans, cephalopods, and topshell (rapana). In addition, thanks to abundant freshwater lakes and rivers there is also an inland fishery for certain species as well as wild-caught carp for the Iraqi and Syrian markets.
Exporting for thirty years
Kocaman Balikcilik, a family-owned company, was established in 1923 and has been in the fish business for three generations and on export markets for three decades. In addition to seafood it is also involved in the production and export of terrestrial snails and frogs’ legs, products that are caught in the wild from the west and south of Anatolia. Bulent Basaran, the company’s foreign trade manager recounts how, when the company was originally established, it traded in fresh fish on the domestic market mainly selling to Istanbul, which even in the early twentieth century was a city of some 2m or 3m inhabitants. Sales were also to Izmir and Ankara, two other urban centres. In the 70s exports started, originally to nearby countries such as Greece and Bulgaria. In the 80s, freezing technology became more widely available in Turkey and the company started freezing products and exporting them. Red mullet, gurnard, hake, monkfish, and pelagic fish such as anchovies, and mackerel were among the marine species sold at the time, and from the lakes carps. The company established markets for its fresh and frozen products in France, Italy and central Europe. Today Mr Basaran says the company is the biggest producer of frozen processed products thanks in part to a freezing capacity of 150 tonnes per day.
Smelt is among the important seafood products
The company is very active on the French market for land snails (Helix lucorum) with a turnover of 80m pieces per year. The snails are collected in the villages around Turkey by the villagers and brought to collection points across the country from where they are brought to the processing facility by truck. The gastropods go through a complex process to make them involving cooking, removing the meat, cleaning the shell, re-inserting the meat, topping with a butter sauce, and freezing. Among the seafood produced, smelt (Atherina boyeri) is an important product, with about 2,000 tonnes exported to the EU. Smelt has two seasons, the first starting in April and extending to June, while the second starts in September and continues to the end of December. The fish is caught from lakes, but can tolerate a wide range of salinities and is also known to inhabit estuaries, coastal lakes and other brackish waters, as well as the sea. The company also processes the fish by marinating, for example, anchovies and sardines, and by smoking, such as, mackerel, as well as combines seafood including octopus into salads. These species are all locally caught in the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Some 200 tonnes of the marinated products are exported to the United States where they are sold at retailers such as Costco and Shoprite under the brand of the company’s customer.
Production based mainly on wild species
Pike perch is caught in the local lakes and is popular in the Netherlands, North America and Italy, and cuttlefish and octopus is exported to Greece, Italy, and Spain. Frog legs are sold fresh and frozen to Italy and France, the biggest consumer of this product. As with the snails the company has several collection points where villagers deliver the frogs (Rana ridibunda) they have caught. Frogs can be caught throughout the year except for one month, when they are breeding. In contrast, snails can only be caught for a brief period after the rains in the spring, after which the supply dries up. In Turkey, says Mr Basaran, access to the raw material, and the finance to pay for it, are all important. Kocaman is dominant on the domestic market for just this reason and because it has a good supplier chain. Europe is not the only destination for the company’s goods, it is also exporting products such as crayfish, shrimps, topshell (rapana), bluefin tuna and, most recently, sea cucumber and blue crabs to South Korea, Japan and China. Sea cucumber is harvested from particular areas in the Aegean Sea, it is not available all along the coast, and the company has entered into agreements with the divers and the boats that harvest these echinoderms. The company’s processing facilities are certified to a range of international standards including HACCP, BRC, IFS and ISO and are also approved by the Russian food safety authorities. However, working with wild products is not easy, says Mr Basaran, as the supply can be very unpredictable.
Joint venture in tuna farming
Kocaman is a shareholder in the Akua Group, a Turkish farmer of bluefin tuna that has its cages near Izmir. Kocaman processes the fish, filleting, freezing and shipping at -60 degrees centigrade to China, where it is used for sushi and sashimi. Some items are sold under Kocaman’s own brand. Shrimp (Parapenaeus longirostris), for instance, is exported to Spain under the label Gamba Blanca, and smelt too is sold under the company’s brand. The reason for our success with these products is the quality, says Mr Basaran. The shrimp is fished from the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara and is processed very quickly after harvesting to lock in the quality, and this is why we have been successfully exporting this product to Spain for the last two decades.
| Kocaman Balikcilik AS | |
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Bandirma, Balikesir Tel.: +90 266 7338551 |
Foreign Trade Manager: Bulent Basaran Product forms: Frozen, marinated, smoked, live< br /> Markets: EU, USA, Russia, China, Turkey (15%) |
On the domestic market Kocaman works with the big supermarket chains like Migros, Tesco, and Metro selling marinated products, frozen shrimps, squid, and octopus. The squid is imported from China, repackaged, and sold locally, typically as frozen tubes or rings. In the past, the company used to import squid from Spain, but duties and tariffs imposed on EU products made it necessary to seek other non-EU suppliers. Kocaman has been regularly increasing its sales by some 10% a year by skilfully exploiting opportunities that arise. Finding new products, customers, and markets and keeping a close watch on quality are the ingredients behind the company’s success.
