Tilapia: the various processing methods from harvest to customers

Tilapia is one of the most worldwide on sale aquaculture fishes, with over 3.2 million tons per year for the last 4 years, and an estimated value of 249 million dollars (USD) (FAO statistics 2017). China is the highest share of global production (over 1.7 million tons/year since 2015) and is by far the greatest exporter of frozen tilapia.

In order to present a high-quality product, the harvested tilapia goes, depending on the buyer or final customer, through various operations. Here we highlight the most common forms of tilapia products in the market and the processes they go through:

Fresh Tilapia Fishes:??

The harvested Tilapia fish is cleaned and conserved at a cold temperature (approximately the positive 0°C) to stop any form of alteration to the product. It is then transported directly to the final market to be sold to clients. In this case, the transport operations should not be long. The markets are usually places not far away from the farm. In order to maintain the low temperature, transporters use cold chambers, ice on the surface of the fish, or immerse it into a mixture of water, salt and ice. The freshness guarantees a high nutrition quality to the client and relatively good economic profit for the seller.

Frozen Tilapia fishes:?

Freezing Tilapia fish gives it the advantage of conserving it for long period, which usually targets big/international markets. After the harvest, tilapia is cleaned and transported primarily to fast freezing under a temperature from -1°C to -5°C. This step is done in order to cover the fish with ice crystals, prior to decreasing fish temperature to -18°C or less, and finally conserve it in a low-temperature room. There are various methods to freeze the products e.g. freezing by direct contact, air blast freezing…

Transformed Tilapia?products:

This process is done by specialized companies that buy the fresh tilapia and invest in the transformation to present different types of Tilapia products (e.g. Tilapia’s tin can, sausage…) depending on the targeted market. This transformation adds a long conservation period to the final product, as well as more nutritional values, and, of course, good economic profitability.

Other than conservation methods, there are different ways to give tilapia products more market value. The selection of the material used in packaging the product is one of those methods. Product presentation and publicity play a crucial role in client attraction and therefore add more economic value to the product.

All in all, the final customer and the investment capacity are the two most important factors to take into consideration in choosing the convenient valorization process and they also play a direct role in setting the expected profit from the product.