ROCKY POINT PRAWN FARM

HISTORY

	Murray Zipf

The owners of Rocky Point Prawn Farm are Murray Zipf, his father Trevor and his uncle Keith. This family was one of the original German settlers to pioneer the sugar cane district of Beenleigh -Woongoolba over 100 years ago.

The prawn farm was established in 1984 as an attempt to diversify from the declining fortunes of the sugar industry in Queensland. Murray attained an Associate Diploma in Aquatic Resource Management at Central Queensland University. Initial crops of crayfish proved unsaleable, resulting in a shift to prawns. The farm cultivated the black tiger prawn (P.monodon) for domestic sales in the early years. Subsequently It secured a lucrative export contract to a Japanese restaurant chain.

In 1989 Murray started the Rocky Point Hatchery in order to secure a reliable supply of seedstock for the prawn farm.. Broodstock is purchased from trawlers, with a one month turnaround in saleable size of juvenile post larvae (PL) prawns. The hatchery also supplies other prawn farms nationwide and exports stock to Fiji, Solomon Islands and Chile.

In 1994 the focus shifted to cultivating the kuruma (P.japonicus) for the Japanese market. Three major reasons underlining this shift; firstly, the black tiger prawn was cultivated in most South East Asian countries at half the cost of production of Australia, making our exports non-competitive on price in the world market. More importantly, the value of the kuruma prawn, packed alive in sawdust and airfreighted daily to Japan,was significantly higher. This niche species also had the distinct advantage of requiring a more temperate climate for cultivation, thus eliminating the traditional tropical Asian competitiors.
Lastly, Australia supplies in the opposite season of Japanese farmers, thus entering a window of favourable trading conditions in a period of low supply.

Traditionally the Australian prawn producers have been told that the auction market is the only viable system of sales. Subject to the vagaries of wild price fluctuations daily, caused by changing demand and supply, this system has proven to be ultimately unsustainable in the long term.The promise of potential high prices commanded in times of low supply are undermined by the reality of selling at below cost for most of the time.
However, due to the intricate system of business relationships in the Japan, significant barriers are placed before importers who wish to circumvent the chain of middlemen and deal direct with the end user.