The planned upgrade of the tilapia hatchery in Twickenham Park, St Catherine, is expected to bring an end to supply concerns on the local market, while boosting inventory for Jamaica to re-enter the export market for freshwater fish.

The latter is a target Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining Floyd Green hopes to hit by 2029 but in the interim, his focus is on growing the local freshwater fish stock to increase the National Fisheries Authority’s (NFA) coverage of the market from 35 per cent to full supply.

“We have been providing 500,000 fry [young fish] annually, which is about 35 per cent of the demand and what that means, unfortunately, is that at times our small and medium-sized fish farmers are forced to wait up to six months to get stock from the NFA.

“That is not good for their business and unfortunately because of this waiting period, some of them end up going out of business. We have also seen low quality stock largely from inbreeding, and the industry is also faced with resource and capacity constraints. Thankfully, this new project will give us the capacity we need,” Green said.

He was speaking at the groundbreaking for the NFA Tilapia Upgrade Project on Thursday, February 29 in Twickenham Park, St Catherine.

The project, which comes at a price tag of $574 million, is being jointly funded by the NFA and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund through the World Bank’s REDI II programme. Construction of the facility itself is expected to cost $378 million.

The development will include the construction of a 12,000-square-foot bio-secure and climate resilient tilapia hatchery, the installation of an off-grid solar system, a mechanical wheel bath, rainwater harvest and storage system, a first-warning system, a back-up generator system and the installation of an access control system.

The upgrade will also include an asphalted parking area, a tertiary-level sewage treatment system, the rehabilitation of the guard house and administrative office, and a washroom. The construction contract has been awarded to Contraxx Enterprises.

The facility is expected to produce up to five million advanced tilapia fry annually, and will ultimately support the sustainable production of tilapia for diverse markets, thereby contributing to improved income opportunities at the community level. It will also utilise a recirculating aquaculture system, which will reduce the hatchery’s water use by 95 per cent.

“For years the NFA, particularly the fisheries division, have been clamouring for some resources to expand the capacity of what they do. Very few projects tick all the boxes of our strategic direction at the ministry which focuses on four main pillars, what we call the new FACE of food and this project does,” Green said.

FACE is an abbreviation of the targets set out by the ministry, particularly: food security, agribusiness development, climate-smart technology and export expansion.

“On the topic of export expansion, there was a time when Jamaica used to be an exporter of freshwater fish. We have to get back to that stage and this project makes it possible,” the minister continued.

The fast food sector was previously a strong market for Jamaican tilapia, but it lost a big source of supply when Jamaica Broilers Group (JBG) gave up local markets in favour of exports of the product in the early 2000s. But with dwindling sales, JBG eventually withdrew from the tilapia export business in 2008.

That led to glut supply of tilapia on the local market, which then drove down prices to points that were unsustainable for small to medium-sized farmers. Additionally, the industry faced additional challenges including increasing fuel and commodity prices and the competition from cheap foreign imports for fish fillet and other fish product substitutes.

The challenges have resulted in the gradual contraction of fish farming as well as a change in the production practice of some fish farmers.

But as part of the programme, Green says NFA will work to encourage new entrants to come into the industry.

“One of the things that we will be doing very shortly, hopefully next week, is an associated training programme. We have invested resources in Ebony Park to revitalise their fish ponds, we want to use Ebony Park as a base to train the next generation of fish farmers,” he said.

The Government agency is also exploring the local production of fish feed.

“Not only do we need to have better stock, but we need to ensure that we do more local-based feed. We have an ongoing project that’s looking at our capacity to produce fish feed because a lot of the components that we use for our fish feed are imported now,” Green said.