Value Chain Analysis of Fishery in Puri and Ganjam District of Orissa

Draft Report on “Fishery Supply Chain”
Confidential
8.7.1 Supply of product
The supply of the fishes from the landing center is through the middleman via agents / auctioneer
to the wholesaler or the commission agent at the regional market. The international market takes
up the value chain of exporters via commission agent to the international market directly or
through buyer arrangement. Both the supply chains are robust in the sense that the backward
linkages of the chain, which serves as the feeder channel, are strongly networked and supported
by other linkages like credit, informal relationships and other fringe facilities which keep the feeder
channel or the fishermen base intact for the present value chain.
The operational efficiency of the value chain for domestic market, in delivery of goods can be
considered to be average to good based on the parameters of timely delivery, packaging and
transportation. But the value chain is inefficient in handling the volume of trade as losses from
drying of the community amounts for 3 – 7 %, various species are dried owing to lack of buyers for
them, grading and sorting operations and because the information gap between the market and
the producer is high.
8.7.2 Place/ distribution
The present value chain for fishery is concentrated mainly to few regional markets that include
Kolkata and Bhubneswar. There is some movement of product to Delhi, Mumbai and
Vishakhapatanam market as well. The potential of other markets is yet to be explored which may
be lucrative and profit yielding. The value chain is limited in terms of number of market and
spread of the product on geographical locations.
Also the value chain needs to explore and identify the location of potential customers, which are
catered by supply chain originating at other location, and ‘push’ the product strategically in the new
markets. The limitation of the present value chain in terms of marketing intelligence is immense.
The market information to the players of the value chain is limited. The middleman of the present
chain is the link to the domestic market. The price information is limited to him and is normally not
shared with the players lower in the value chain. The feeder channel is unaware of the market
demand of the external market and normally the produce is dispatched without this information to
the markets. This severely impedes the profitability of operation.
8.7.3 Promotion and price
The present value chain of fishery does not practice promotion and
pricing strategy for the product. The marketing of the product is done
under the generic brand value that is highly associated with the
species in trade. The branding of the source is not prevalent in this
trade. Except for the prawn coming from Chilka, which has an
association with the place of origin, no other variety has any specific
branding to segregate the product from other available offer in the
market.
Prawns from Chilka
are considered to be
of good quality, size
and taste and of
natural brackish water
origin; hence it
fetches a premium
price in the market.
The value chain completely looses any distinction in terms of market acceptance of its product.
The product does not get premium price because of its superior quality or any special feature. The
lacunae created can be traced in product positioning and branding that hampers the profit margin,
which it would have generated otherwise.
8.7.4 Service and customer relations
The value chain for fishery normally has informal flow of relationship between the players and
‘word of mouth’ is the normal parlance in trade. The product ‘fish’ can be placed in the nonbranded
fast moving consumer goods and hence shows distinct characteristic of non-association
of the customer with the product.
The entire trade is not formalized in terms of contracts and agreements between the actors of the
value chain. The flow of good and services are on mutual trust and agreement, which are not
documented. The trade is highly unorganized in terms of credit and finances. The credit services
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Submitted to -: OXFAM (India) Trust 60