Industry Minister: Fish Processing Industry Development to be Prioritized

Jakarta, InfoPublik – Industry Minister Saleh Husin said fish oil will become one of the priority commodities in the fish processing industry development program. Fishery-based food industry belongs to the priority sector.

“Usually, fish oil is considered as a byproduct. Whereas, if processed properly, it fish oil supplement products can gain 1000 per cent added value from fresh fish,“ said the Minister in his statement in Jakarta, Thursday (6/16).

According to him, one of the refined products having great potential is fish oil. Currently, Indonesian fish oil producers are only able to produce fish oil with the category of crude oil and have not been able to produce edible fish oil.

In order to be able to increase the value added in the industrial products, explained Saleh, the development of processing technology is an important factor in the implementation of downstreaming program of fishery-based food industry as instructed on the National Industrial Development Master Plan (RIPIN).

Processed fish products which now can be produced in Indonesia are canned fish, frozen fish, fish oil, fishmeal and animal feed.

He added that the export value of fish products is improving but still relatively small compared to the total of non-oil exports, with only 2.98 percent. Meanwhile, the fish processing industry in Indonesia consists of 636 large scale Fish Processing Enterprises (UPI) and 36,000 small scale or household UPI with simple technology.

"One of the fish processing industry developing in Indonesia is fish canning industry. Currently the there are 41 companies, with 46,500 employees and Rp1.91 trillion investment value,” said Saleh.

The installed capacity of this industry reached 630,000 tons with 315,000 tons production value in 2015 (production utilization was only 50%). Subsequently, in 2015, the export value of canned fish reached USD23 million, with USD1.9 million of import value.

Saleh added, the Industry Ministry keeps improving partnerships with relevant agencies and businesses to build integration between upstream and downstream bussinesses. The effort is expected to improve the security of raw material supply and quality assurance as well as product safety of fish processing industry. 

"Through the Industry Ministry’s offices, we expect that we can also improve capacity of the quality test laboratories for fish products through equipment and technical assistances," said Industry Minister.

Meanwhile, to develop facilities and infrastructure of the fish processing industry machines and equipments are distributed to potential areas.

In addition, the Government continues its effort to create a conducive business climate through the harmonization of import duty tariffs between the upstream and downstream for seafood products and increase added value of fishery products through the provision of ice plants and cooling units to increase the shelf life of fresh raw materials and as buffer stock when production result is abundant.

The development of fishery-based food industry requires support from reated ministry or other relevant institutions. Industry minister explained that in 2015-2019, the policy of fishery-based food industry development is focused on various processed fish products, fish oil processing technology development and formulation of fish oil standard.

Furthermore, the year of 2020-2024 will be focused on the development of fish oil as a functional food and fish processing industrial waste (food grade) based functional food. (Translator: Erik Limantara)