Japanese seafood firms add Thai sushi facilities

A number of Japanese seafood and frozen food companies will this year add new capacity for sushi products at plants in Thailand, according to a report.

The Maruha Group is building a production line at its new Thai factory, which is slated to begin operations in June, that will specialize in processing seafood for consumption as sushi, reported the Nikkei news last week.

The line will have an annual processing capacity of 2,000 tons and the company is expecting to make Y2 billion from the segment, said the report.

Western consumers have developed a taste for the Japanese dish in recent years but there has recently been a strong increase in orders from European and US wholesalers for seafood to be prepared as sushi, according to the paper.

Another firm, Kyokuyo, will produce frozen sushi at a new Thai factory that is scheduled to come onstream in August, it said. The company, which will ship products to the US and European markets, is developing a way to prevent sushi rice from becoming dry when defrosted.

Thailand is one of the world's leading suppliers of seafood products, earning US$ 4.1 billion from international export sales in 2004. Its 2,500 km coastline has made it the world's top exporter of frozen shrimp and leading exporter of canned tuna, and trade has been boosted by government incentives to the seafood industry such as exemption from machinery import duty and corporate income tax.

Japan is the country's second biggest seafood importer after the US, with sales of BT1.8 billion in 2004.