Profitability: Catfish farmers task members on increased value creation

The Lagos State Catfish Allied Farmers Association of Nigeria (LASCAFAN) has tasked its members to ensure increased value creation to boost the profitability of the sector.

The LASCAFAN Chairman, Mr Olatoye Fajimi, made the call in an interview with our correspondent on Friday in Lagos.

Fajimi noted that for local farmers to increase the profitability of their trade they must devise innovative strategies to add value to their produce.

“In the area of value addition, we are already encouraging our members to be innovative in value addition in order to earn more.

“We have also trained our members and we are encouraging our processors to develop various kinds of fish products, like catfish powder, catfish kilishi, catfish fillets, and all the other derivatives, catfish oil.

“We cannot just depend on the regular ‘point and kill’ to break even in the sector.

“With the development of various derivatives from catfish and its offal, we will be able to add value to the produce, which will allow us to sell in other varieties and increase our profit margin,” Fajimi said.

The LASCAFAN chairman called for the resuscitation of frozen catfish sales with the aid of their blast freezers.

“We tried frozen catfish as an association some years back but it did not really work out due to low patronage of the frozen catfish.

“The patronage was quite low because our people are more used to the fresh catfish than the frozen ones. So, the cold-chain for catfish was not profitable to us.

“We still have the blast freezers, but they are currently not in operation because of the failed attempt, so we could not break even, that is why we had to stop it.

“But we are hoping that when that Lagos State buy-back arrangement comes up because they intend to also blast freeze the catfish produce they offtake from catfish farmers and hold them for a while,” he said.

He expressed optimism that the resuscitation of the blast freeze business would help to increase the profit margins of the fish farmers.

“In operation, we will have more frozen catfish in circulation and hope by that time, our frozen catfish business will also begin to thrive,” the LASCAFAN chairman said.