Hai Long Seafood: “Choosy markets make us more professional”

Mr. Tran Minh Tai Vice Director of Hai Long Seafood

However, after several struggling years, the company has finally taken off. Its production volume and quality have increased steadily. On July 5, 2009, Hai Long Seafood was officially transformed into a joint-stock company, and now becomes a large seafood processor in Ba Ria - Vung Tau province with the production capacity of 10,000 MT per year.

The export values of Hai Long Seafood have increased from US$2.724 millions in 2005 to US$3.584 millions in 2006 and then to US$14 millions in 2010. The company purchased nearly 21,000 MT of seafood raw materials in order to process to 8,600 MT of products for export in 2010. In addition, it also processed over 1,500 MT of seafoods for other exporting companies.

Diversified products

Currently, Hai Long Seafood has two workshops, one processing shrimp, squid, crab, fish, octopus..., and the other handling frozen fish paste. The production line and equipments are imported from Korea and completely automatic.

Besides the flagship products of surimi and imitative surimi, Hai Long Seafood also has a thick catalogue of high quality seafood items for domestic consumption, first of all squid and octopus. Octopus, for example, can be frozen whole, filleted, cut into pieces, or boiled. Similarly, squid are also transformed in a wide range of products.

The company adopted HACCP for all the processing stages, from raw material collection to storage of end products. Everything is under strict inspection of quality monitoring staff to ensure their technical parameters meet requirements.

Competent human resources

Mr. Tran Minh Tai, Vice Director of Hai Long Seafood said he is proud of his staff and considers them as strength of the company. The workers are skillful and experienced while the leaders are energetic and knowledgeable. Together they create stable foundation for the company development.

Another strength of the company is raw seafood supply. The company has cooperated closely with fishers inside and outside the province to ensure steady raw material supply. Before 2009, its raw materials were sourced only from the middlepersons in the province and the nearby areas. Today, its suppliers cover all coastal provinces from the North (Hai Phong, and Thanh Hoa province, etc.) to the South (Binh Thuan, Ca Mau, and Kien Giang province).

With all that, Hai Long Seafood has built its reputation as a reliable player in the markets. Since its foundation, the company has not received any complaints from the buyers with regard to delivery delays or other issues.

However, like other seafood processors, Hai Long Seafood is facing the capital shortage, lack of access to the bank loans and high interest rates. “The procedures for obtaining investment, factory construction and production expansion permits are too complicated and confusing for us,” said Tai.

Challenges are opportunities

While maintaining traditional markets such as Korean and Taiwan, the company did not miss any opportunity to expand its buyer network. It managed to expand the production scale, diversify processing products, and increase the proportion of value added products to meet all the requirements of the buyers. With the slogan “quality assurance is a breakthrough for the company development”, processed seafood products of Hai Long Seafood have become more and more attractive to the consumers.

At the beginning of 2010, Hai Long Seafood successfully penetrated in Japan and by the end of the same year, it gained access to Thailand. These markets are highly competitive and have strict requirements on food safety, especially Japanese one.

“Choosy markets create more pressure on the suppliers. We have known how to transform the pressure into development impetus. Thanks to that, we have become more professional and stronger,” said Tai.

With the dynamic, innovation and great efforts from the company leaders and all staff, together with the strategy to serve customers better, Hai Long Seafood has gradually confirmed their prestige on world markets.

By T.D