Fresh Catch now a shell of its former self

News Five’s Isani Cayetano headed to La Democracia to find out more about Fresh Catch Belize Ltd. He found out that once a powerhouse in the fish farming industry, the company is today only a shell of its former self. The estimated seven hundred acre spread, two hundred and twenty-five of which is currently being used for production, is now a virtual ghost town as employment on this vast estate has seen a steep nosedive over the last four months.  Here is Cayetano’s report.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Fresh Catch was owned and operated by the Mena Group before it was placed on receivership. The company began experiencing financial difficulties a few years ago when its principals realized that the business was facing dire straits.  The pitfall came on the heels of two consecutively successful years when the production and processing of tilapia for export was at its peak.  In 2008 the company produced approximately four point two million pounds of fish for shipment to Mexico, Guatemala and the United States and while its now defunct owners chose not to divulge figures the two year period has been regarded as Fresh Catch’s best financial years.

Despite an increase in profits during this period the company is said to have been delinquent in financing an investment loan from First Caribbean Bank some say was in the range of twenty-seven million Belize dollars.  Its inability to repay the mortgage compounded by failure to met production demand for tilapia on the foreign market forced the Mena Group to take stringent measures in raising the necessary monies by minimizing its overhead expenses.  In late April the company underwent a massive downsizing from a staff of sixty to a mere twenty-five employees on a daily basis.

The dip in workforce however did not affect energy and food consumption on the plant.  On average Fresh Catch utilizes forty thousand dollars in electricity used to power several aerators located across its ninety functional fish ponds.  The average content per pond, depending on the size of fish being raised, varies from two hundred thousand fingerlings to forty thousand adolescent and twenty-five thousand adult fish per pond. It is an operation that is based heavily on numbers and while they may seem large it is proof that Fresh Catch was producing at a larger scale.

Five years ago the company had to expand its growing business by introducing an additional fifty-four ponds to its production line.  That expansion naturally required an increase in human resources and feed for its four point five million fish.  Today the company has been placed under receivership by First Caribbean Bank.  Apart from its shrunken staff which is in danger of being terminated the entire fish population is also in jeopardy.  Since taking over operations on July twenty-first the company’s new owners have not purchased the necessary feed for the tilapias. It has been a little over three weeks and the remaining employees fear that there might be a fish kill resulting from starvation.  The receivers, we were told, have ordered a shipment of twenty-eight percent crude protein, nourishment that can be eaten by the overall population but considered detrimental to the growth of fingerlings.

But while the fate of Fresh Catch Belize and its myriad tilapia hangs in the balance. Until then what’s left of Fresh Catch is a collection of shallow fish ponds that flow from one into another eventually emptying into two large reservoirs; a marvel of Israeli engineering and an empty plant with a stack of empty fish crates.