Image: Balfegó / FIS

Balfegó invests 2 million euros (USD2.21 M) in new aquaculture facilities in Italy

Balfegó, a company specializing in fishing, aquaculture and trade in bluefin tuna, has internationalized its business and launched aquaculture facilities in Italian waters in collaboration with a company from that country, Cababianca. The new pools are located specifically 2.5 miles off the coast of Marina di Camerota, a town in the province of Salerno, in southern Italy.

Source: Balfegó / Wiki / FIS

With this initiative, which has involved an investment of two million euros to Balfegó, the company comes out of the "restrictive and discriminatory" interpretation, says the company, which carries out the European Commission of current legislation. In Balfegó's opinion, the EC's reading of the farm capacity allocation regulation is incomprehensible, as it only slows down the commercial initiative of the European companies themselves against fleets from third countries. Thus, in the case of Balfegó, it prevents legal catches made from authorized quotas from being received at its facilities in L'Ametlla de Mar. In addition, the company points out, there is discrimination against catches from European boats, since, if the catches were from vessels from third countries, their entry would be allowed.

As Juan José Navarro, deputy director of Balfegó, a company that dedicates 100% of its activity to bluefin tuna, explains, "we have been forced to invest outside our country and this means, unfortunately, that the employment and wealth it generates in our activity will be created outside our borders. For this reason –adds Navarro–, not only is the growth and dynamism of a company like ours being slowed down, but also that of Catalan and Spanish society itself”.

According to Balfegó, this EC interpretation also penalizes the carbon footprint of the fishing activity by causing the transfer of hundreds of tuna caught in the Balearic fishing grounds to the Italian coasts.

It should be remembered that, in last year's fishing campaign, Balfegó had to give up 265 tons of bluefin tuna due to the interpretation of the European regulation (2019/833) that modified the 2016 regulations in 2019 to adapt the distribution of catches to the increase in fishing quotas for this species granted by ICCAT to the EU, after the good results of its recovery plan.

Photo: Balfegó

The East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is the only bluefin tuna fished and managed sustainably, from an innovation and traceability perspective, worldwide. Balfegó considers that the effort made by the committed fleets should serve as a model for all fisheries for tuna species that are overexploited.

<-- Photo: Balfegó

Likewise, Balfegó recalls that all the bluefin tuna that leaves its factory has incorporated, for years, an innovative digital traceability management system whose objective is to offer maximum transparency to the consumer and fight against the illegal trade of this species in the chain. commercial.

Project in the Basque Country

Balfegó's interest in the future of sustainable and legal bluefin tuna has another aspect in the Basque Country: the Itsas Balfegó project, a company founded by Balfegó and the AZTI research center, for the development of live bluefin tuna aquaculture in offshore waters. Euskadi. In fact, Itsas Balfegó has just presented a plan to the Basque Government to create the first live bluefin tuna aquaculture facility in submersible cages off the coast of Getaria that will allow it to overcome the effects of storms in the Cantabrian Sea during the winter.

Photo: Balfegó

For the execution of this project, Balfegó points out, it will be necessary to have the institutional support of all the administrations, as well as the necessary regulatory changes to be able to develop bluefin tuna fishing with purse seine gear, for fattening purposes, in a period wide enough to ensure the catches, and therefore the activity, as other countries such as Norway have authorized. The project presents economic, social and environmental improvements compared to the current exploitation model.

Source: Balfegó 

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Address:	Polígono Industrial edific. - Carretera de Barcelona a Cádiz
City:	L' Ametlla de Mar
State/ZIP:	Tarragona (43860)
Country:	Spain
Phone:	+34 977 047 700
Fax:	+34 977 457 812
E-Mail:	[email protected]
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