HATCHERY OPENING

Senator Boswell

Murray Zipf

Rocky Point Prawn Farm, 50 kilometres South of Brisbane, recently opened a new hatchery to meet their ongoing requirements and also to meet the requirements of other Australian prawn farms. There is also a small but developing export market for their high quality, disease free larvae.

Martin Perkins of the Queensland Seafood Marketers Association told FIS.com that the annual capacity of the hatchery is in excess of 100 million larvae. "Senator Ron Boswell - a Federal Government politician, who has been extremely supportive of the Australian aquaculture and seafood industries, officially opened the hatchery," he said.

Rocky Point Prawn farm, a family-run business, also have a well-established kuruma and black tiger farm as well as the hatchery. The farm has developed under the guidance of the Zipf family to become an extremely productive kuruma prawn facility. The majority of their production is sold on the highly selective Japanese market. Restaurants in the main cities of Australia now have the opportunity to access both live kuruma and live black tiger prawns during their production season.

The 'Rocky' brand kuruma prawns is available at the world famous Tsukiji market in Tokyo. The farm, which boasts about 31 ponds and an annual production of about 90 tonnes, exports about 500 kilograms of kuruma prawns to Japan five days a week for five months of the year.

The Australian prawn farming industry is worth about AUD 50 million a year and rising.

By FIS.com