The government wants to use the caviar export quota allocated to the country and impede illegal trade. (Photo: Stock File / FIS)

Govt launches state monopoly caviar

Kazakhstan is introducing a state monopoly caviar brand worldwide to reap the benefits of the first internationally agreed quotas since 2008. It will reach Western markets next spring fishing season.

The brand will be named Zhaik Balyk, after the Kazakh word for the Ural river, and is expected to be packaged in tins designed to be as hard for smugglers to forge as banknotes.

The monopoly will be controlled by the government of Bergei Ryskaliyev, the mayor of Atyrau province. He said he aspires to revive the prestige of the town's caviar that once supplied the Tsars of Russia, The Telegraph reports.

"The Atyrau brand was very famous around the world," he commented. "But during recent years, it lost its previous fame, so the government made a decision to transfer it from private ownership to state ownership."

Kazakhstan has rights to 13 out of the 80 tonnes of wild caviar exports permitted until 28 February 2011 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which agreed on the quota in July. The rest of the quota will go to Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.

Sturgeon poaching rocketed after the fall of the Soviet Union, cutting the sturgeon population in the Caspian Sea by over 90 per cent. This led to calls for a moratorium on sturgeon fishing from environmental groups and the Kazakh and Russian governments. 

Ryskaliyev’s administration claims the state monopoly will make it tougher for smugglers and poachers to exploit the fishery.

"The cans will be no less secure than the bank notes that we have, because the product is so expensive," said Erbolat Kadimov, agriculture and fisheries secretary of the Atyrau region. "The monopoly avoids people smuggling the product in tins with the same brand, because it will not be possible to forge."

The monopoly will span all national sturgeon products and cut out the few local co-operatives that until recently could sell small amounts of caviar domestically.

Caspian caviar was a state monopoly in the Northern Caspian Sea until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, when Iran alone took over management of its caviar industry through a monopoly.

The Atyrau local government has taken over the fish canning plant Atyraubalyk, which holds the country’s caviar export quota, and is in the process of taking control of the 89 per cent stake of Brooklyn Group Consultants. A 49 per cent stake will then be sold to new private investors to raise the USD 50 million needed to modernise the plant.

Related articles:

- Beluga caviar export quotas agreed: UN 
- Decade-long sturgeon ban proposed 

 By Natalia Real
[email protected]
www.seafood.media

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