ADDCON Managers in the Philippines

In April and May 2009 Dr. Karsten Schroeder and Dr. Kai – J. Kühlmann, both Application Marketing Managers of the ADDCON Asia, joint forces in exploring the Philippine agricultural markets to promote ADDCON’s product range focusing mainly to aquaculture and fisheries markets.

The Philippine Aquaculture market is the fourth biggest among SE-Asian countries headed by Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, and produces about 0.8 Mill MT of milkfish, tilapia and several species of shrimps annually (2007).
Both experts visited 10 potential clients in Manila area, Negros and Cebu and introduced the growth promoter Aquaform and the fish-preservative Fishform Plus to technical personnel from production and sales and CEOs of various feed mills and trading companies. ADDCON products are new to the SE Asian market, thus information about those innovative ‘Green Chemicals’ were met with great interest.

“Introducing the fish-preservative Fishform Plus of the ADDCON Group of Companies to the Philippines would be of advantage to the Tuna industry in Mindanao as tuna landings can be preserved in its freshness on the one hand and, would save handling costs on the other”, summarized Malcolm Sarmiento, National Director of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) in Manila and underpinned his interest in Fishform Plus.

By applying Fishform Plus to the offal obtained from tuna catches, massive costs on ice storage and electricity – traditionally used up to present – could be saved as this preservative maintains the by-products’ freshness and protein quality for several days. Subsequently, the quality of the fishmeal produced from ‘preserved’ raw materials can improve significantly.
Although customers were impressed by the potential of the various products regarding improved health condition and growth performance, verification trials under local climate conditions are still in demand.

Thus, grow-out trials for tilapia and milkfish are in preparation to test different concentrations of Aquaform added to the respective compound feeds.

To demonstrate the prolonging freshness effects of Fishform Plus under tropical conditions, a local trial with freshly caught fish is being conducted in Cebu, while product focus seminars are planned for the tuna industry in Mindanao (Southern Philippines) and the trash fish processors and fishing operators in Negros.