Abalone expansion plans
A BELLARINE Peninsula premium seafood firm is aiming to offer new jobs, as part of a new investment to create canned products in-house.
Jade Tiger Abalone has unveiled plans for a $1.2 million expansion of its large Indented Head base, which will see it build a new packaging facility.
The facility, which will add 13 new jobs, will alleviate the need to send live abalone interstate and allow the company to oversee all stages of creating long-life shelf products.
While it now employs 32 staff, Jade Tiger Abalone said that number would increase to 45 when its retort facility was up and going.
There are hopes that the retort processing — which is now done off-site in Adelaide and Mallacoota — will begin in January 2020.
The process is pitched as a low impact operation, releasing “no significant emissions” and having no impact on the amenity of the coastal township.
Jade Tiger Abalone typically processes one tonne of product daily, although it has capacity to double that.
The company has previously forecast increasing production by up to three-fold.
It built a new $2 million export facility in 2016, as it eyed off the lucrative online sector, which delivered directly to elite Asian restaurants.
The facility allows for abalone to be packed on the shores of Port Phillip Bay and transported live across the globe.
The company says its farm is the largest environmentally sustainable operation of its kind in Australia.