Image: : courtesy Revista Puerto

Argentine shrimp will generate four hundred jobs in Paraguay

ARGENTINA
Thursday, November 25, 2021, 02:00 (GMT + 9)

Two Spanish companies invest more than twenty million dollars in a Patagonian Shrimp (Pleoticus muelleri) processing plant in the city of Hohenau, department of Itapúa. They source "block shrimp" from Argentine companies. In Paraguay they make products with ‘added value’ and are re-exported to Europe.

The Patagonian wild shrimp season began in Paraguay. The claim seems ironic, but what was announced at the time as a possibility has come true.

The companies Pamape SL and Wofco SA, both of Spanish origin, made investments 6 kilometers from the Paraná River, in the city of Hohenau, department of Itapúa, located near Posadas, the missionary capital.

  

Pamape and Wofco have among their clients Patagonian fishing companies that supply them with shrimp in blocks, where it will be reprocessed at more competitive costs and then take a final product from the gondola to the European market.

This Patagonian wild shrimp that will be reprocessed in Paraguay is fished in national waters of Argentina and also in the jurisdiction of the Province of Chubut. In Argentina, a 'minimal' process is carried out, they are frozen in tablets and exported to Paraguay; There, Spanish food traders apply added value and re-export a finished product to Europe.

Photo taken when Spanish and Argentine businessmen met in Paraguay with the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Luis Castiglioni, to advance the possibilities of installing a food processing plant

The Iberian companies explained that they chose to invest in Paraguay because they “had competitive costs”, assuming that these conditions were not found in Argentina, from where they are supplied with shrimp.

The newspaper La Nación de Paraguay revealed that “the great project will generate a total of 400 sources of work for the inhabitants of the area. The firm will freeze and process the crustacean within the plant and then be exported abroad ”, he stated regarding the investment in the city of Hohenau.

The information adds that the plant will be installed 6 kilometers from the Paraná River and will have the capacity to produce 24 tons of shrimp per day. The installation process has already started and it is estimated that it will last approximately 6 months of work.

“The beginning of the project had the permission of the Municipality of Hohenau in conjunction with the Government of Itapúa. Both institutions signed an agreement with the South Atlantic Company, founded in Paraguay and made up of the companies Pamape SL and Wofco SA, both of Spanish origin,” they comment regarding the company they created in the neighboring country to set up the processing plant.

"Paraguay is very competitive"

The representative of the South Atlantic Company, Lucio Tortosa, told the Paraguayan press that “we did a research work covering different aspects and factors. We were very attracted to it, especially the value of the country's energy. Paraguay is very competitive. We made comparisons with other nations evaluated, and Paraguay has everything it needs to be able to enter the field and establish itself,” he said.

The Argentine internal situation

The recent reductions in withholding points for Argentine fisheries exports and the increase for the “frozen blocks” would not slow down this commercial practice, which has had a sustained growth in recent years.

One of the main exporters of shrimp blocks for reprocessing abroad confirmed that they will continue with this modality, since they do not have incentives and real conditions that make local production costs competitive to produce high value-added products.

Photo: revista Puerto

In this scheme is that this investment is produced by two Spanish food companies that are interested in the "Patagonian wild prawn", they buy it from Argentine fishing companies, but they choose to reprocess it in a third country where there is less tax pressure, and labor costs are different.

Autror/Sourcee: Nelson Saldivia/Revista Puerto (translated from original in Spanish)

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