Oceanpick organised culinary teams from leading hotels in Nuwara Eliya and Kandy to tour the company’s fish farm and nursery sites in Trincomalee.
The visit helped to experience first-hand Sri Lanka and South Asia’s first-ever commercial scale oceanic Barramundi farm, which offers a year-round supply of fresh sea grown barramundi while empowering Sri Lanka’s hotels to source sustainably.
Key Account Executive Shabir Ahamed gave a personalised tour to executive chefs from over 10 hotels in Nuwara Eliya and Kandy.The group was taken on the much anticipated boat tour of Oceanpick’s off-shore sites. The company is investing in familiarizing Sri Lanka’s culinary industry leaders on its innovative sustainable seafood offering and methodology, whilst empowering the industry to offer premium sustainable seafood for discerning customers.
The goal of sustainability is to balance the needs of today without negatively affecting future generations, while also protecting the interests of those who work in the seafood and fishing industries. Sustainable seafood is caught or farmed using methods that prioritizes the long-term life of the species as well as the well-being of the oceans. Dwindling natural marine resources are forcing countries to rethink their marine fishing policies and Oceanpick is the first company in the region to launch sustainable seafood sourcing in response.
Executive Chef Priyantha of Grand Hotel explains, “Cooking with sustainable ingredients is a growing trend globally and is increasingly being used in food and beverages. More interestingly, this responsible farming method by Oceanpick produces high quality seafood without compromising on taste, which is an important factor for us as chefs, because eventually our customers want to relish the food. Since Sri Lanka attracts tourists from all over the globe where sustainable sourcing is a practice, we too have to be geared to fulfil customer requests for sustainable seafood.”
In the National Restaurant Association of US’s 2016 culinary forecast, sustainable seafood ranks 9th amongst the top 20 food trends. Globally, leading hotel chains such as Marriott and Hyatt hotels have adopted sustainable seafood programmes into their supply chain in response to environmental concerns.
Oceanpick now offers Sri Lankan hotels the opportunity to adopt this global standard by supplying them with sustainable seafood to protect the island’s marine resources.
The first phase of Oceanpick was completed with a US$4.5 million investment with a 400 MT production capacity, but the company anticipates doubling the capacity to 1,000 MT within the next couple of years.
Many leading hotel and restaurant brands that value sustainability and premium ingredients have already adopted Oceanpick’s product into their menus and the footprint continues to grow as Oceanpick continues to set the benchmark for hygiene, freshness, sustainability and supremacy of taste.