Constantly Affirming Position

Monday, December 17, 2018  14:40

CL-FISH

As a frozen catfish fillet processor and exporter, Cuu Long An Giang Fisheries Import Export Joint Stock Company (CL-Fish) has overcome numerous difficulties and challenges of the market economy to develop into a large-scale company engaged in a closed production model, from feed processing to pangasius farming and processing, to gradually affirm its pangasius export position in the world market.


Sharing about the company’s development orientation, President and CEO Tran Thi Van Loan said, to ensure product quality in the whole process of farming and processing, CL-Fish always keeps up with changed and new regulations on quality standards and adjusts policies to suit its export market structure. CL-Fish is one of leading seafood companies to update and apply highest and strictest food quality, hygiene and safety management systems, such as HACCP, HACCP FDA, IFS, ISO 22000:2005, BRC, ASC, BAP and HALAL, to minimise risks of trade barriers and meet all requirements in even the most particular markets.

                                    
The company has developed a closed vertical production chain from feed production, aquatic breeding, culturing, processing and consumption to actively meet input sources. Currently, CL-Fish owns six fish farms covering over 150 ha in the Mekong Delta, which supply 50,000 tonnes of input fish a year, meeting 80 per cent of the company’s processing demand. These farms impose stringent traceability and quality controlling programmes to fingerlings and feeds under European ASC standards, which helps CL-Fish strictly control product quality from farm to fork.


At the same time, CL-Fish invests in advanced production equipment to improve product quality. The company now has three processing plants powered with the most modern production lines with a daily capacity of 250 tonnes and one fish feed production plant with a yearly capacity of 120,000 tonnes to meet all the company’s feed demands and supply the market under the name of Cuu Long Feed. From here, CL-Fish can control quality, price and input to supply to meet many markets simultaneously.


With a closed production process from farm to factory, the company's products are currently exported to more than 70 countries, including markets such as the United States, the European Union (EU), the Middle East, South America, and Asia (Thailand, China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and India). Especially, after a long time of strict inspections and tests, CL-Fish has become a direct product supplier for the world’s leading retailer Walmart Inc and well-known supermarket chains in the Middle East. The company’s annual export value reaches US$60 million from shipping 30,000 tonnes of finished products.


Loan said, complying with safety and quality regulations is a mandatory practice for the company but strict employment standards and social responsibility practices to employees and community are the hardest aspects to be satisfied in doing business with Walmart. Despite facing a lot of difficulty in implementation, this issue is monitored by the company at all times. In addition to its efforts to improve livelihoods and incomes for more than 3,000 employees, CL-Fish also fulfils its tax obligations to the State, does charity or develops the community. The firm is striving for organic technology, building a clean and beautiful environment and landscape, applying energy saving technology, investing in standard wastewater treatment system construction to show its environmental responsibility. Moreover, with its business philosophy of “honest and friendly in negotiation, absolutely honest in product quality committed,”

CL-Fish always respects customer interests and turns strategic customers into close business friends. Therefore, CL-Fish still has stable and sustainable growth despite economic volatility.
Export seafood processing is tough and risky. In that context, CL-Fish advocates intensive investment to develop the closed production process from feed, breeding and culturing to export processing to increase the added value of products. While maintaining traditional markets, CL-Fish will also seek to open up new potential markets to have active responses in case of volatility in traditional markets on the one hand, and increase export value and profit, stabilise and improve incomes for workers, on the other.
 

BICH THUY