Summary

About the fishery industry work within the crisis year

The Head of the Federal Fishery Agency (FAR), Andrey Krainiy tells:

- This year, the home catching output should amount to 3.65 million tons, while the average per capita consumption – 13.4 kilogram.

- As of December 1, 2009 there has been caught 2.209,6 million tons, i.e. 208.7 thousand tons (10%) more than the level of the previous year. Then Northern, Western, Volga-Kaspiy and Azov-Black sea basins follow.

An important issue there used to be the reduction of list of species, on which the TAC is established. It includes the Pacific Salmons and the organizational measures this year permit to achieve the record catch – 538.5 thousand tons.

- According to the ROSSTAT (Russian Statistics Department) the exported fish products includes 89% of the frozen fish, too more 2.2% – the Crustaceans and only 5-7% of the secondary processing products. In 2009, compared to 2008 the import amount reduced due to the fish fillets reduction: within the 11 months the reduction amounted to 23.2% (up to 149.4 thnd MT), in the money terms – by 25% (to $277.2 million).

- The FAR tasks for the next year will be as following: we shall further modernize the normative-legislation basis: there should be worked out amendments to the «Law on fishing» in regard to the secondary turn-out of shares, the lift out of restrictions to catch in the territorial sea and for the coastal fishery – in the EEZ. We also will support the establishment of a transportation-logistic company to uninterrupted delivery of fish from fish grounds to consumers. Also we will continue to work on the stimulating the ashore processing – we will create additional stimulus for companies and will contribute to the establishment of specialized fish markets’ net.

Where the winds of changes blow

The epoch of changes came to the fishery industry. Yana Yashina, the General Director of the «FISHNEWS» company limited, tells the Chief Editor of the Russian News Agency Fishnews.ru:

- Sure, fishermen accepted the 10-year quotas with readiness. I think, if reforms stopped with that – it would suite the majority. Anyhow, further steps by the State followed.

- I don’t’ believe the threat of Fish Exchanges’ introduction should be accepted too seriously. The situation is changing, psychology of fishermen is changing, big companies started to strive for consolidation and transparency. There is underway the process of conditions’ formation for a successful home business. And this process envisages a reciprocal participation, which means a «gentlemen deal».

- I cannot say for sure about all the mass-media in general, – what happens in the fishery industry, I can say it only for the «Fishnews». One of our main tasks still remains the function of the communication site for the dialogue between the business and the power. This site, first of all, gives the possibility to personify the business, and not the business only.

Law-making process must be transparent

«Fishnews» correspondent communicates with the Deputy of State Duma of the RF, member of the Committee of natural resources, use of nature and environment, Marat Zagidullov.

- The modern fishery legislation of Russia is just some five years old and now the fishery industry is headed by good professionals capable to see the future. However there still exist a number of disagreements between the practical fishermen and lawmakers. Thus being a lawmaker I’m trying to maintain good working relations with the VARPE, Pollock Association and other association and trade-unions of fishermen.

- One of the most important and controversial issue under regard at present is the adoption of the new wording of the Technical Regulation «Foodstuff products out of marine living resources». The process of discussion and adoption of this Regulation is the best sample of problems in cooperation between the legislative and executive powers with the fishery industry. My personal opinion is the adoption of the Regulation is a bit ahead of time, more to say the terms and wording used there is not synchronized with the Federal Law «On fishing and preservation of marine living resources». Anyhow we are ready to regard the corrections made by fishery companies and introduce necessary amendments.

- Another important issue we are working on is the further development of taxation system in the fishery industry, I mean the work over the «Unique agricultural tax” and the problems related to introduce it into the practice. Rather important is the issue of the fate of the catching output by scientific vessels. Lawmakers are going to introduce further amendments to the principal fishery law, «Law on fishing…». I mean the development of new types of quotas, which should be the quotas «for State needs». Quite for a long period of time we work on the issue of «market turn-over of shares in the fishery industry», which to my view is an effective mechanism to solve many problems in the fishery industry. This problem requires an additional work and adoption of a number of special amendments.

- At the construction of modern legislation of great importance is the role of the mass-media, which permits to present the position of each participant of the process, thus I wish every success to all the correspondents and employees of the «Fishnews» magazine.

There must be paved the road for the business

The Vice-Governor of the Primorsky territory, Igor Uleyskiy tells the «Fishnews» magazine about results of the Primorye fishery industry results and the State support for.

- Adoption of necessary legislative acts alongside with the long-term allocation of quotas to catch the marine living resources to fishery companies gave a positive impetus to the development of the Russian fishery industry. The financial situation of the Russian fishery companies within the 9 months of 2009, compared to similar period of 2008 has been improved.

The value of the production output in present days prices, with the account of the ashore processing products, for the 9 months of 2009 amounted to 16,042.5 million Rubles (115.7% to the same period of 2008). Deliveries to the local market by only Primorye fishermen, within 9 months of this year, amounted to 150 thousand tons out of the total catching output of 450 thousand tons (i.e. 111% to the level of the last year). Salaries of fishermen also have grown, thus an average monthly salary amounted to 20,100 Rubles, while last year it was some 18,000 Rubles.

However, notwithstanding the improvement of current financial indices, fishermen are unable to renovate their main assets, the fleet, alone, without the State support.

- State power is all the time waiting for constructive proposals from the industry’s participants. And it’s possible to deliver these proposals and recommendations by various means. We, in Primorsky territory, have a possibility to hold every year the International fishery congress, where we can wage a dialogue contributing to enlargement of foreign economic cooperation and strengthening the business ties of Russia. At present we have already started the preparation for the next congress, we are busy with the development of the program, searching the main theme, determining the themes for the round tables discussions. We are looking forward to seeing the initiatives and ideas from fishermen.

Maxim San’ko: «The Centre of the fishery monitoring system (CSMS) faces a global task – to collect data on all the kinds of fisheries »

The head of the Federal enterprise «Centre of the fishery monitoring system (CSMS)», Maxim San’ko, answers the «Fishnews» magazine questions.

- The tasks standing in front of the Center are all the time enlarging and growing. At first our task used to be to collect the data on the production activities of the fishery fleet only. Now we are collecting all the information in regard to all the types of fisheries and their characteristics. And sure we encounter a lot of problems in doing that, related to technical and organizational reasons.

- We prepared a plan of actions which was recently approved by the Head of the Federal Fishery Agency and until the end of this year we have to develop and experimentally exploit the new soft-ware which permits to collect more detailed information needed for taking decisions on fisheries development and mainly the use of quotas, first of all during the salmon season.

- Besides at present we are actively engaged in issues related to the safety at sea problems, thus we resolve the problems of inclusion into the system of technical means of our Center the elements of the Satellite Global Positioning System (GMSSB).

- Regretfully we have no technical possibilities to enlarge our data bases by adding there the data on sea and air parameters, like temperature, salinity etc. However we could be ready to wage such a work if certain problems would be solved. Special attention is paid by «fishery powers» at the problem of preventing the IUU fishery and our Center is actively involved in solving this important problem.

The fight against poaching requires a system approach

The Chief of the Regional border-guards department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia for the Far East federal district, colonel general Valeriy Putov tells the Chief editor of the «Fishnews.ru» about the State power efforts aimed at preventing the illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

- According to the data of the Far East Customs agency of Russia, as of September 2009 there were exported outside the territory of Russia more than 700 thousand MT of marine living resources for the total value of more than $1.2 billion, that exceeds the amount of exported marine products within the similar period of the previous year quite 7 times. The main exported species still remain Alaska Pollock, quite 100% of the crabs’ catches, Sea urchin, Shrimps, mollusks, Skates. According to the official statistics the main consumers for Russian sea products are the PRC and the Republic of Korea, with quite 93% of the total exported volume. Compared to pervious year the deliveries to these countries grew 10 and 7 times respectively. Only 5% of the total export of marine living resources were delivered to Japan.

- Prevention of illegal catching and exporting of marine living resources is one of the most ardent as of to-day. An index of effectiveness of our fight against poaching is the number of poachers’ vessels we confiscated. Within the period of 1999-2004 there were confiscated 7 vessels in accordance with the court decisions, while in 2005-2009 – more than 80 illegal «harvesters». As an index of the fight against poaching there can be regarded the price rise for marine living resources in a number of Asian-Pacific countries, thus the price for Scallops grew quite 200% within the several last years.

- There can be seen the trend of reduction in number of vessels engaged in poaching. Thus within 2006-2008 this index reduced by 41%. Alongside with that the number of vessels-violators under foreign flag, in relation to Russian-flagged vessels, is growing: within that same period the number of detained foreign-flagged vessels grew from 22% in 2006 to 44% in 2008.

South hemisphere ocean – possible ways of solution

Russian fishermen do not leave their plans to fully scale exploit the resources outside their economic zone and stabilize their presence in the World Ocean. The director of the «ОСEANprojects International Ltd», manager for the business development, long voyages’ captain Serguey Bubnov and the legal consultant, graduated from the Auckland University, New Zealand Anton Babkov are answering the «Fishnews» magazine questions:

There is already an active fishery in the open part of the ocean: krill, tooth-fish, crabs, girti, poutassou and sure the main target specie is Horse macherel. But it’s not a simple thing to organize the fishery in this area. However, more than 30 countries and international corporations announced about their intentions either already have started the work in the South-East of the Pacific.

- Top priorities of our activity are three main directions. The first one – OCEANfisheries, – solution of management issues of fisheries in the South-West of the Pacific, Antarctic and the South of the Indian Ocean. The second one – OKEANtehnology – the use of modern technologies and modern data bases to support the fisheries, and the third direction – OCEANseafoods – is the exportation of fish products to the markets of Australia, South-East Asia and Europe. Thus we propose several variants of possible cooperation. We’d like also to mention the importance of the certification under the standards of the Marine Stewardship Council as we in New Zealand already have several fisheries certified under the MSC.

Correction of errors

Correction of errors – in this way the legislative work within the last two years can be denominated, the President of the All-Russia association of fishery enterprises, entrepreneurs and exporters (VARPE), Yuriy Kokorev tells.

- The results of 2009 testify the efforts undertaken by the VARPE and its members produced good results. It relates to amendments to previous normative acts and laws. As a very stubborn we can name the struggle around the introduction of the Government-supported Fish Stock Exchanges. Another vital issue concerns the shares and quotas. We support fishermen it’s unwise to introduce new kinds of quotas, as they have been already divided into shares and allocated for 10 years.

- But of the greatest concern for us and for the whole fishery industry of Russia is the entering into force of changes to the Article 21 of the Federal Law № 166 «On fishing…», not only because of a sharp limitation of scientific-research works. This article makes to destroy the marine living resources harvested in the process of scientific and control catches, if their condition does not permit to return them back to the habitat.

- By the way this problem is closely tied up with another problem of the base-boat chartered fleet. 27 vessels in the Far East, which were built under the guarantee of the RF Government are staying idle in ports, even they are ready to sail. And the part of this fleet was meant to be used for surveys in the open parts of the World Ocean.

- Making up the results we can state that in 2009 we applied all the efforts to the law-making sphere in order to correct the errors made there before. We pay much attention to the representation of the fishery community in the bodies of legislative and executive power. Thanks to our efforts for more than two years there has bee working the Government commission for fishery complex’ issues and by now the President of the Pollack Association, German Zverev is making part of it. Still the work in this direction is going on.

Fish is waiting…

The «Fishnews» magazine took an interview on issues of the «cheap fish» and who should control it from the General Director of the Dalryba Joint Stock Company, Vyacheslav Moskaltsov.

- First of al it should be necessary to remember that the fishery industry is a material input and a labor-intensive specie of production. An optimum margin for the companies-producers of fish products amounts to 25%.

- The majority of consumers live far from the main fishing grounds. Out of 141.6 million of the population of Russia only some 20 millions live in the Eastern part and the other 121.6 million – in the European part.

- This year the fishery industry caught and processed a record amount of Salmons – 535.8 thousand tons, the Pink salmon out of this amounted to 421.3 thnd MT, Keta salmon – 82 thnd MT, Sockeye – 28.3 thnd MT, Coho – 3.5 thnd MT, King salmon – 0.7 thnd MT. The producer’s whole-sale price of a 1 kilogram of Pink salmon gutted with the head amounts to 36 Rubles, plus the transportation costs. The cost of a single refrigeration section (160 tons) up to Moscow amounts to 1.7 million Rubles, plus the cold-storage keeping cost. The final price of the wholesaler should be 75.97 Rubles. The surplus of a retailer is at the level of 20% – 13.81 Rubles. So, the retail price is – 91.16 Rubles.

- However, it should be understood, – a fisherman would sell the fish where it is taken at a good price, he must get a profit.

Cabinplant defrosting secrets

Raising the catching output and severing requirements to the quality of products puts new tasks in front of producers. In order to raise the quality of final products it’s necessary to improve the quality of defrosting. An undisputed world leader in the sphere of defrosting devices is the «Cabinplant» company. The vice-president of the company, Vagn Drud Hansen, is answering the questions of the «Fishnews» magazine.

- Our company started to produce defrosting systems for the fishery industry in the beginning of 70-s of the last century. Engineers and constructors of our company, together with specialists of some scientific-research institutes of Denmark have developed the method of defrosting the fish products with the help of circulating heated air. In 1988 the «Cabinplant» produced the first defroster of air-drop type and installed it at the production facility «Fletcher Fishing» in New Zealand.

- The defrosting process can be directed both manually and in an automatic regime with more than 50 various programs. Of great importance for the defrosting process is the washing of the defrosting camera. To ease the operator’s work the «Cabinplant» machines are equipped with the installed automated washing machine. To automatically offload the defrosted raw fish there is used an elevator-dumper with integrated transporter belt.

Specialists of the Danish enterprise «Cabinplant» are ready anytime to invite the interested persons to their company and to demonstrate the possibilities of their devices to defrost the various fish raw materials.

Peter Gordienko: kolkhozes are passing away

The Chairman of the largest fishery kolkhozes’ association, «KrayRybakKolkhozSoyuz», Peter Gordienko, tells «Fishnews» magazine about the effectiveness of fishery kolkhoz system and the problems fishery kolkhozes of Primorye are facing now.

- Regretfully, nowadays the term «kolkhoz» is obsolete morally and psychologically. The equality, which envisages this system «kills» the competition, leads to negative consequences, like thievery, unfair treatment of labor, etc. When the kolkhozes were transferred to the unique system of taxation it led to the fact only 3 kolkhozes remained out of eight existing before. Previously in the kolkhozes’ system there were working 12 thousand people and only 2.5 people remained. My opinion is there must be changed form of the of collective business – to a company limited, joint stock companies, etc., with the account of all the necessary criteria. As we live in a society, where everybody use the unique Labor Code, Tax Code, Customs rules, thus we must come up to more modern forms of direction, corresponding to the present days’ realities.

- The main direction of kolkhozes’ activities will remain the fishery inside the economic zone. While the further development will depend upon the status of our main asset, the fishery fleet. With every passing year the fleet is becoming all the time older and the expenditures to maintain the fleet are in disproportion to iur revenues. To maintain the balance between incomes and costs – is the main task of a business leader.

- Without a support of the State, regretfully, we won’t be able to renovate the fleet. As to build new vessels with the use of credits is something like a fantasy, the credits’ interests are too high. The fishery business is a risky business, thus the banks are unwillingly deal with fishermen. The credit schemes for fishermen are still absent.

- A very promising direction of development for Primorye kolkhozes’ members is the development of marine aquaculture. However all the beginnings in this area run across insuperable obstacles. Low effectiveness of marine resources cultivation is related first of all with the lack of State support of this sector and the lack of legal basis for.

Insurance as a civilized instrument against Force-Majeure

In October by the Federal Fishery Agency there was established a working group for the development of insurance of the fishery complex of Russia, which comprised four representatives of the «Military Insurance Company (Insurance House VSK)» at once. The vice-president of the VSK, the head of the Ship insurance department, Andrey Korsunskiy tells on the matter.

- At the first meeting the working group regarded the issues of development of insurance programs for the fishery complex of Russia, namely the insurance of responsibility for non-compliance with State contracts, vessels under construction, insurance of fish resources, insurance of health and life of fishermen and the FAR employees.

- There exist a standard set of marine risks’ insurance. VSK is successfully working on all the insurance directions, the fishery industry included. First of all this is the hull insurance, then the insurance of ship-owners responsibility in front of crew-members, for environment pollution, etc.

- Speaking about the general situation at the insurance market of Russia I can mention some 740 insurance companies to work there, however only slightly more than 70 of them are working in the sphere of ship insurance. Regretfully there are negative occasions as not all the insurance companies demonstrate their professional approach in this specific sector. We, in the VSK, created even a special department, the Directorate of pre-risks expertise and analysis. So I can say with assurance that we have formed a unique collective which has been working for more than 10 years and that help to gain a reliable authority in the sphere of ship insurance.

“Lucky shot”

The year 2009 for the «Fishering Service» company was marked by another success – the company presented its new trawl, «SuperShkval-1920» in Iceland. Director of the company, Andrey Fedorov, tells the story.

- At present there are two main directions the fishery companies follow to increase their economic effectiveness: to directly increase the volume of catch and freezing the fish and to improve the processing of fish onboard in order to produce more expensive product. My choice is the first one.

- The key factor is the fishing gears: if the fish not harvested – there is nothing to freeze and process. Thus it goes without saying: for a harvesting vessel the top priority is the perfection of its fishing gears.

- Last September we participated to the world fishery exhibition World Fishing Exhibition Vigo 2009. It was clearly seen: captains and fish-owners were in search of new more sophisticated fishing gears. «Fishering Service» is capable to solve any problem related to the installation of fishing gears, delivery commission and education of the crew to manage them.

How to make business and innovations friends?

President of Russia, Dmitriy Medvedev, signed on August 2, 2009 the Federal Law № 217 «On introducing changes into normative acts of the Russian Federation on issues of establishing business communities by budget-funded scientific and educational institutions with the purpose of practical application (use) of results of intellectual activity». Rector of the Far East State Technical Fishery University (DALRYBVTUZ), Georgiy Kim tells on the issue.

– To my point of view such a Law is vital for our science and education. But, between a Law and mechanisms of its implementation there is a huge gap. We are looking forward to the soonest adoption of the decree giving such mechanisms. Such a decree should contain practical steps the educational and scientific institutions should follow in order to create such business companies. Also the RF Government should elaborate a program of financial assistance to educational institutions at the first stage of the Law’s implementation.

– Within the framework of the Law under the aegis of DALRYBVTUZ there is possible to establish dozens of small-scale enterprises where the jobs would be offered first of all to students. In the sphere of aquaculture it could be the breeding of Scallops, Oysters, Hokkai shrimp and, surely, Trepang, the sea cucumber.

– There is a lot of other developments, for example in the sphere of technology of metals. We have a very strong faculty of ship engineers, they all the time invent something new – we have many new designs of experimental trawls, other fishing gears. In case it would possible to establish small-scale companies we could create up to five thousand new jobs.

- So, it’s up to the State to create the legislative base, which could be interesting for educational institutions and positive changes could be seen at once.

The light born in the new century

«Apelsin» was the first company in the Far East of Russia to start deliveries of new kinds of equipment and accessories absent at that time at the market. General director of the «Apelsin» company, Igor Latyshev tells for the magazine.

- When we were buying the first container with the lightning equipment in China were risking very much as it was hard to change the skeptic attitude toward the Chinese products. We chose our supplier in the South of China, sure it had all the quality certificates of the majority of countries of the world. However we had to certify them in Russia at our own. To tell the truth the bulk of the Chinese equipment suits ideally to Russian vessels. And we really tried to fill the gaps on the market of lightning equipment at that time. At present the assortment of our products offered to customers exceeds more than 10,000 items, with that the lightning equipment covers just 60 items.

- Our next goal is to import to Russia the items which are not known to our customers. Today we managed to prove that the Chinese products could be of high quality, with that – at a reasonable economic price.

Game on an advancing

Director for marketing and development of the engineering company «Technological equipment», Anton Sukhorukikh tells the «Fishnews» magazine about new products, technologies and services to be proposed to customers.

- In general this year used to be rather tense, but quite successful to our company and at present we are able to solve any technological problem at a world level, with account of all the nuances of a specific client.

- We have developed a technological conveyer line for salmon processing, which has great advantages as compared to its analogues. We also developed a wonderful flounder processing line, which takes into account all the peculiarities of this fish. We put into serial production highly effective devices to produce cold brine. We also developed and started to produce a number of devices meant for the caviar production. At present we are working over the development of a machine to produce salted-frozen roe. Within this year we received five patents, two more we are registering now.

- Speaking about new directions of our company’s activities we must mention first of all the design and construction of industrial premises and installations, design, production installation and commission of refrigerating complexes onboard the ships. We are proud to tell you we got this year the Golden diploma of the Sakhalin exhibition «Fishery Industry» for the most successful contract of the year.

- The present crisis showed that key industries should be developed in every country. Shipbuilding is absolutely one of them, thus there was started the establishment of the State Shipbuilding Corporation. In case it will be a serious program the shipbuilding and ship-repair in Russia would be revived in Russia in 5-7 years. Sure we cannot stand aside: in November of 2009 we accepted the proposal to participate the making the design and to produce technological and refrigerating equipment for large trawlers, BMRT-type, which will be built for Russian customers at one of the ship-yards of the State Shipbuilding Corporation.

Modern onboard fire-fighting systems

General director «Kaskad-Vostok» company limited, Vladimir Bakharev, told the «Fishnews» magazine about the modern onboard fire-fighting systems.

- The technical condition of a vessel is controlled by the Russian Marine Register, which establishes certain technical requirements and specifically requires the vessels to be equipped with systems of volume fire-fighting. But mostly these systems are rather obsolete and of little effectiveness. As an alternative we proposed to install our system of volume aerosol fire-fighting.

- One generator of 210 millimeters in diameter can protect a premise of 40 cubic meters. Besides the composition of the aerosol is not toxic and it’s possible to breathe in a premise where the fire occurred, the people will remain alive. Our generator do not require additional space to install them, the generators are constantly placed inside the engine room.

- We are engaged in equipping the vessels with our fire-fighting systems sine 2000. For example, quite 95% of the second-hand fishery vessels purchased in Japan since 2000 are equipped with our systems.

- Ship-owner are mainly rather reasonable persons, they treat the issues of security very cautiously. They prefer to purchase fire-fighting systems of new generation and at a full scale.

Valery Monakhov