Evergreen Conglomerate, formerly Guangdong Evergreen, is still pressing ahead with plans for a huge aquaculture development in Saudi Arabia albeit at a slow pace, the firm told Undercurrent News.
The limited progress on the project, which was officially announced in China in April of last year, and revealed by Undercurrent in late 2018, has been blamed on the pandemic.
Evergreen chairman Chen Dan and Mohammed Salem H Alharbi, CEO of Falcon Vision, signed an agreement for a "fisheries park" at the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in April 2019.
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However, little has been shared about the plans for a vertically integrated shrimp farm, hatcheries, feed plants, deep-water cages with processing facilities, previously reported to be worth $300 million, in the Middle Eastern country.
Given the paucity of information since putting to pen and paper, some in the industry have wondered whether the project had stalled.
Earmarked to be built across 4,000 hectares near Jazan, on the Red Sea, besides vertically integrated farms, the site would include R&D training centers and other support facilities forming a "complete aquaculture industrial chain".
"Yes, the project is still going on," Samantha Xie, director of Evergreen's international department, reaffirmed to Undercurrent. "But unfortunately, it is also affected by the COVID-19 epidemic in Saudi Arabia this year, and has only seldom made progress."
"However, this whole time we have been in touch with our partner in Saudi Arabia to exchange views for overall project planning and construction details," she said.
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She added that "construction preparation" is being discussed.
Evergreen previously said it would be responsible for the overall planning and design of the project, equipment supply, installation and commissioning, product marketing, personnel training and technical support. It would also take on some level of operation and management.
The project will also involve a "high degree of automation" and "complete biological safety control systems", and provide leisure facilities for tourism.
African and Middle Eastern countries lined up to work with Evergreen, which is headquartered in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, after it successfully built the region's largest turn-key vertically integrated shrimp and tilapia farm in Egypt.
Opened in November of 2017, the $90m development was built by the Chinese company in collaboration with the Egyptian military.
Xie said the Egypt farm -- which was opened by Egypt’s president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi -- "has been generally running well". A project team from Evergreen is currently on-site to provide operational and technical support, she said.
She added Evergreen also plans to build an aquafeed mill in India in the near future, adding to feed mills it operates in southeast Asia. Currently, the firm has a sales office in India, from which it markets shrimp feed.
December 01, 2020 at 04:44PM
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China's Evergreen reaffirms giant Saudi shrimp development still on - Undercurrent News
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