Mekong Delta An Giang province-based Agifish, a leading national seafood producer, is likely to fulfill its target of exporting 16,500 tons of tra and basa catfish over the entire period of 2006, according to the company general director, Ngo Phuoc Hau.
In the first half of this year, Agifish is estimated to have shipped 9,000 tons of catfish abroad.
The achievement was attributed to the joint-stock company's policy to strictly follow international standards on management such as HACCP, GMP and SSOP in production.
The company has therefore been granted a seafood export Code to enter European markets through the European Union and a certificate from the British Retail Consortium on food safety.
Its Agifish club has also been recognized by the SQF institute of the US as meeting SQF 1000, international standards on the safe quality of caged fish farming. The Agifish club, which produces 25,000 tons of catfish a year, was awarded the certificate of SQF 2000 standards for its processing quality in August 2005.
Agifish was also the first seafood exporter in the Mekong Delta to set up a safe fish farming union, named Agifish Pangasius Pure Union, which requires indicating raw materials origins on the processed product label.
To secure a sufficient supply of safe materials, the company has built five farming areas with strict control of water sources.
The company has also intensified investment in technology to improve its processing quality. In 2006, a frozen goods factory and a 3,000-ton cold storage facility worth VND108 billion was newly built while two other existing factories have been upgraded to increase their daily processing capacity from 120 to 150 tons.
A laboratory has been modernized to secure high-quality testing for the residues of antibiotics or banned chemicals in raw materials such as Malachite green, cloramphenicol and nitrofuran residues.
The Agifish trademark has so far achieved a strong worldwide position for meeting international standards on food safety. The European Union, the United States, Australia, the Middle East and Hong Kong are among the key export markets for the bourse-listed company’s frozen and processed catfish. VNA
Vietnamese
