Undercurrent News
Sinan Kiziltan of Kilic Deniz
Turkey’s largest seabass and seabream producer Kilic Deniz is still assessing whether to carry out its plans to build a 15,000 metric ton farm in Morocco, Sinan Kiziltan, executive vice president at the company, told Undercurrent News.
“We’re still doing a feasibility study on different markets,” said Kiziltan. The intention is to calculate whether producing abroad is profitable, he said.
Kiziltan could not say how long the study is expected to last, or which other countries they are considering for any new foothold. “We are looking at different opportunities around.”
Greece, however, is not one of them, he said. “We have no plans of expanding in Greece.”
Kilic first unveiled plans to invest €80 million in building a farm in Morocco when speaking at the GOAL 2013 conference in Paris in October last year.
Speaking to Undercurrent at the time, Kilic’s director of overseas investments and international relations Hayri Deniz had said work on the farm was due to start right away, with an aim to start stocking juveniles in March 2014.
The site would be located on the northern tip Morocco near Tetouan, only a few miles away from Gibraltar, and would be fully vertically integrated from hatchery, feed to farming and processing, Deniz said at the time.
Kilic farms around 33,000 metric tons of bass, bream and trout in Turkey. This makes it the biggest producer in Turkey, ahead of seven other major producers – Agromey, Gumusdoga, Camli, Sursan, Sagun, Kaplan and Kusey Deniz – according to information from one Undercurrent industry source.
The company says it exports to more than 40 countries, which accounted for 62% of total sales in 2012, compared to 44% in 2009. The EU is its key market, and the US and Russia are among its fastest growing destinations, said Deniz.
by Eva Tallaksen
