Philippines government to build containerized feedmill to support mariculture

The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) has committed to build a 3 tonnes per hour capacity aquafeed mill in Tacloban to support growing ocean aquaculture development in Eastern Visayas.

Construction of the facility, which will be the first in the region, will start early next year. A containerized system has been selected for flexibility, to allow for future expansion and changes.

In an interview with BusinessWorld, BFAR Regional Director Juan D. Albaladejo said farmers were having a problem with buying feeds because there is no local producer. which creates high transportation costs.

"Because of lack of storage and cooling facilities in Northern Samar, some of the fish catch has been wasted. Those are good raw materials for the feed mill," Mr. Albaladejo told BusinessWorld.

Root crops can also be a source of raw materials. A laboratory was recently established to process crops into powder for aqua feed processing.

For cassava alone, about 80% of cassava production in the country is used by feed millers as ingredients for animals and aquafeeds.

The mariculture areas are designed to produce fishes through sea cage culture such as bangus, siganid, grouper, red snapper, seaweed farming, aquasilviculture, mussel culture, oyster culture, sea-ranching of lobsters and sea horses in coral reefs and sea grass areas. There are nearly 6,000 hectares of mariculture parks with about 500 fish cages worth over P200 million in the region,BusinessWorld reports. The mariculture zones are located in Calbayog City in Basey and Sta. Rita both in Samar; Tacloban City, Ormoc City, Leyte, Babatngon and Merida in Leyte; Biliran and Naval in Biliran; San Jose and Laoang in Northern Samar; Liloan in Southern Leyte and Quinapondan in Eastern Samar. [Source: http://www.bworldonline.com]