Apex Foods Limited seeks to import white fish from Europe and Africa to process them in their factory, adding 40% value and earning over $1 per kilogram. A meeting held on February 14 involved representatives from various departments and Apex Foods, discussing the import process and forming a technical committee. Currently, the import duty on white fish is 58%.
The company aims to utilize its unused processing capacity due to shrimp supply shortages. With a processing capacity of 67 tonnes per day and three cold storages with a capacity of 2,400 tonnes, the company has invested Tk150 crore in the sector, with an annual turnover of around Tk400 crore and employing approximately 1,000 workers. Concerns have been raised about the import of marine fish due to lack of heavy metal testing, despite radiation and formalin tests being conducted. In 2018-19 FY, 80,000 tonnes of marine fish were imported, decreasing to 12,000 tonnes in 2022-23 FY, while 66,374 tonnes of frozen fish were imported in 2021-22 FY.
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