Rainforest Seafoods expects to triple exports through its soon-to-be-completed processing plant in Kingston.

The growth will see Rainforest’s revenue stream diversify beyond its core regional market — the Jamaica-based company currently exports to nine Caribbean countries — and into North America and Europe.

“We intend to tap into Europe, the US and, in particular, the French Caribbean islands,” Rainforest general manager Ernest Grant said yesterday during a tour of the plant by Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Roger Clarke.

Rainforest has earmarked the French Caribbean as a major market for conch, while the company is targeting Europe for its tilapia products and the US for fresh filets of different locally grown aquaculture species, said Grant.

Rainforest is arguably the largest distributor of seafood and fish products in the Caribbean, and its new plant will be the largest value-added seafood plant in the region.

The Slipe Road facility will have the ability to store six million pounds of seafood – more than doubling the storage capacity of the company’s existing plant in Montego Bay – and its operations will include cooking and breading, smoking, filleting, producing ready-to-eat meals and modified atmosphere packaging. Among the value-added products that will be produced at the facility are a heat-and-serve conch soup and a jerk shrimp that is being developed with the help of the Scientific Research Council.

The US$8 million ($702.8 million) plant, construction on which is projected to finish within eight to 10 weeks, will provide a stronger support network for local fish farmers, said Rainforest CEO Brian Jardim.

“Our intention is to increase our purchases from local fish farmers considerably,” Jardim said

Clarke said the plant is one of the major investments being conducted currently in the agro industry and noted that it presented a big opportunity for aquaculture farmers, who have suffered tremdously in recent years due to a confluence of factors, including rising costs and imports.

“Their (the farmers’) production levels have fallen by probably 60 per cent of what they used to do and they have been gradually getting out of the business,” said Clarke. “We cannot allow our aquaculture to die.”

Clarke said his ministry is committed to “doing something substantial” to provide a boost to the local aquaculture industry, including possibly incorporating fish products as part of the national school feeding programme.

“I see an opportunity there with our filets and tilapias,” he said.

Jardim added that Government can play a greater role in helping farmers to bring the cost of the product down at the farmgate and allow purchasers like Rainforest to process even more.

“Anything that can help us to bring that cost per pound down from the farmgate is going to help us penetrate all our markets,” Jardim said.

Fish farmer Vincent Wright said the local aquaculture industry has the ability to increase production by up to four times the current levels to some 12,000 tonnes.

“We have a lot of ponds that are not in production,” said Wright.

Rainforest has 15 outlets across Jamaica serving thousands of customers daily, as well as processing operations and fishing vessels in Belize and Honduras. Additionally, the company has a fleet of 30 freezer trucks and will have over 350 employees when its Slipe Road facility opens.

Rainforest now sources seafrood from all over the world. Its portfolio of 500-plus stock units includes mussels from New Zealand; salmon from Chile; squid from China; saltfish from Norway; mackerel from Spain; and herring from Canada.