Saudi Arabia working to find markets for its rapidly growing aquaculture output

Saudi Arabia has greatly increased its aquaculture output in the last few years, and now the country is working to help expand markets for its new products.

The country’s National Livestock and Fisheries Development Program is helping with that effort, and the organization hosted a pavilion at Seafood Expo Global – which ran from 25 to 27 April in Barcelona, Spain – for the first time. The ultimate goal of hosting the pavilion, Abdulmajeed Saad Alshehri, the program’s institutional communication manager, told SeafoodSource, is to introduce some of the country’s new products to the world.

The country, Alshehri said, has been working to improve the rules for aquaculture production and has incentivized businesses to start new operations.

“In Saudi Arabia, we improve the rules for aquaculture, we improve the production, we improve the exports to more than 35 countries from Asia, and Europe, and America,” Alshehri said. “In 2016, we only had 67 farms, now we have more than 215 farms in Saudi Arabia, marine water and freshwater.”

The country now has 15 different aquaculture species being raised via aquaculture, and is preparing to develop a regional center for both fisheries and aquaculture.

Alsheri said that the country needs to do more to let the world know …

Photo by Chris Chase/SeafoodSource