Fishy business. The Social Impact of SST.pdf - Act Now!

IB: “Naaah, just last week we had a hundred people at the gate waiting to come in, to get jobs.They heard that we were looking for new people, for whatever reason, they found out…wordgoes out and we get inundated with people …We run several shifts. Parts of the operation runs24 hours…We start bringing fish out on a Sunday evening, four oclock shift, start preparing fishfor the Monday pack, and then there’s butchering and cooking through the night. Then in themorning the first production shift starts, and in the evening the second production shiftstarts..We cook the fish and remove the viscera …and we cook it, and the process of loining iswe clean it, we totally remove the skin and the bones, we break the loins apart, remove the redmeat, the blood meat, that all goes into fish meal; and then the loins are packed in kryo-vac bagsand frozen and sent on to processors who supplement the loins in their production…we’re not acanners like RD…its just a frozen product…we export to Europe, America, Thailand,American Samoa.”N: “Are you Starkist?”IB: “No, we’re not Starkist…we just sell to mostly the major processors…and then they can itand sell it whomever…we just take orders from the majort packers as its required…we don’tlabel it, its not a finished product..Were doing about 100 to 110 tonnes a day, night and dayshifts included…We have a large freezer here so we can have a large buffer of fish in inventory,depends on whether fishing is good or fishing is slow…then we take out 100 tonnes a day…thevessels are owned by the company, based in Taiwan.”N: “Who is Offshore Masters?”IB: “I have no idea. No idea. …No idea…We’ve heard that they’re going to build a factory overhere somewhere..but we don’t know who they are, where they’re from. But we’ve never dealtwith them at all.N: “Is Angco an investor?”IB: “No, not at all…Originally, that was the case, but they have no investment, no investment atall in South Seas…All I know is that they were involved in the project early on, but now…theyhave nothing to do with us, and Kevin Conrad has nothing to do with us either, it was originallyhis idea to build a tuna loining factory but he has nothing to do with it now.N: “So the ownership is?”IB: “FCF. And the provincial government.”Kia: “What percentage is the Provincial Government?”IB: “I don’t know the composition.”N: “Do you have spin off businesses or how do you give back to town?”IB: “Well, we employ a lot of people. A tuna factory like this, there are multipliers out there.We do half a million plus business in town, we generate all our own power here, we don’t usethe town supply…we are using water for the town supply, though. We throw revenues back tothe Water Board and wages going out into the business communities, we inject money into thecommunity, we get involved in some sponsorships.”88