An exclusive industry sector with specialist needs of many suppliers. (processing canned fish)

AN EXCLUSIVE INDUSTRY SECTOR WITH SPECIALIST NEEDS OF MANY SUPPLIERS

The "fish business" is a cabalistic affair and is largely seen to be so even by those directly involved in it. That it requires a special knowledge and understanding can be gathered from the number of almost exclusive specialists engaged in fish handling and processing. A view of canning as seen through the pages of publications dealing with canmaking strictly as packaging manufacture will reveal a very small presence on the part of suppliers to fish canners--and of fish canners: appreciable and appreciated specialist users of canmakers' and decorators' services The fact that in large-scale fisheries a large proportion of modern fish processing procedures were introduced as shipboard operations or have been subsequently transferred to the catching ships is a reflection of the relatively recently developed deep understanding of the rapid spoilage rate of fish and the means of slowing it. Many companies involved in the catching side of the industry confine themselves to just that, or involve themselves only in primary preservation using chilled brine tanks (for herring, pilchards, mackerel, etc.), refrigerated fish holds or bulk rapid deep freezing (to minus 20 [degrees] C) of either whole fish or fillets (for white fish). For this reason, to be part of the seafood processing business, as a canner, one has to be involved at the beginning of the fish chain.

The more so as there have been many recent developments in the fish processing industry which have been made by machinery and equipment manufacturing companies which have always been close to the fish industry. Just as vegetable canners, fruit and juice canners and meat canners locate themselves and their buyers at the supply, so do fish canners and the specialists who supply them.

Local and national specialization

Most of the finest machinery for processing and packing the plum tomato in all its processed forms is designed, developed and manufactured in Italy where this tomato was developed and is, of course, now grown in vast quantities for the canning industry. Most of the pre-process and full-process machinery and equipment for the fish industry has been similarly developed by specialist manufacturers in the expert fishing nations of the world--Norway (the herring--"sild"), Denmark (herring, mackerel) and to a certain extent Sweden, West Germany (the herring), British Columbia, Canada and Washington state, U.S.A. (salmon) and to a certain extent California (tuna) and South Africa (formerly the major source of canned pilchards as the best of a major resource formerly fished in quantity for reduction to fish meal, through which activity the North Sea and Atlanto-Scandian herring stocks were also "fished out". Iceland is is some ways an "odd man out" as a majorfishing nation because much of its fish before the advent of full-scale processing was landed "fresh" in the United Kingdom, Germany and France and the balance was exported as dried cod--"bacalao"--to Spain, Portugal and African countries. Iceland's subsequent adoption of chilling and freezing and exporting in bulk to its major frozen fish market--the United States--and the reduction to fish meal of its herring resource has meant little canning development there. Iceland is, however, a leader in the development of pre-processing technology and computerized production control.

Well-established in the market-place

With a shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific as the major source of fish in quantity suitable for canning on a large scale (and the establishment of exclusive fishery zones now being fished by Asia-Pacific countries with technology transferred largely from Europe and North America) we can expect the development of canneries and canmaking plants at a greater rate than has been hitherto seen, although Thailand is already the major world supplier of canned tuna--whatever the label--and a major can manufacturer in its own right.