Rida Sentissi El Idrissi, CEO & General Manager, Copelit Group / Damsa

Offering a wide portfolio of products such as fishmeal, fish oil, and frozen products, Copelit has become one of the pioneers of the Moroccan fishing industry.

Since its establishment in 1991, Copelit has become one of the pioneers of the fishing industry in Morocco. How would you describe the evolution of the company over this almost 30 years?

The evolution was fairly simple actually. The group has always followed the same path as the one established by the Moroccan ministry of fishing. In other words, whenever our ministry was launching a new fishing, or industry related to fishing, product, we just made sure that we were among the first companies to invest in that area.

Copelit offers a wide portfolio of products such as fishmeal, fish oil, and frozen products. Which of your products is the most demanded?

Copelit group’s first investment was in the fishmeal and fish oil industries in the early 1990s. Then, a few years later, the group started investing in the freezing of pelagic fish such as sardines and mackerel, before investing in one of the biggest fishing industries: canning. All the products from these industries (fishmeal, fish oil, frozen fish, canned fish) have fairly high demands all over the world; therefore, it would be hard to choose a specific one.

2020 has been a challenging year for all industries in Morocco. How has COVID-19 impacted your operations and what are the key strategies you have followed to mitigate this impact?

Since Copelit group is very diversified, it has been able to minimize its losses. In fact, the group has its own fishing vessels, and, therefore, was less impacted by the lack of fishing due to the pandemic. The group also had to quickly adapt to the special situation and did not lose any time to rapidly put in place all sanitary requirements demanded by the authorities. This strategy allowed the group to be able to continue the production all over its plants.

Copelit is member of the exporters association, ASMEX. How much of your revenue comes from exports and to which markets? What are your expansion plans?

Copelit group is mainly oriented to export to international markets. Traditional markets for the fishmeal industry are located in Turkey, Russia, Japan, China, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Egypt, and so on. The main markets for the fish oil industry are Peru, Chile, France, China, Japan, Turkey, and others, while frozen products are mainly exported to Brazil, Russia, Spain, France, Portugal, Bulgaria, and South Africa, among others. Finally, most of our canned products are exported to Italy, the UK, France, Spain, The Czech Republic, Poland, the US, Portugal, Brazil, South Africa, and most African countries. As per our annual turnover, less than 5% of it is done locally.

What are your key goals and priorities for the year ahead and for 2021?

The main challenge nowadays, because of this special situation, is to fulfill all our contracts and commitments toward our current customers first and eventually recover customers whom we lost.