Carrefour deal involves farmers directly

Carrefour, the world's second-largest retail operator, plans to buy shrimp directly from farmers to supply the chain's outlets in Thailand and abroad.

The French company will send a team to inspect and verify shrimp products and farming practices of Kaset Somboon Farm Co to ensure the shrimp meet its standards and are free from chemical residue.

Food service operators, supermarkets and hypermarkets were now opting to deal with farmers directly to obtain freshness, get reasonable prices, and improve their ability to control quality, said Vanich Sowanapreecha, the owner of Kaset Somboon Farm Co which operates more than 20 shrimp ponds in Chachoengsao and Suphan Buri provinces.

According to Mr Vanich, the merchandising unit of Carrefour in Thailand has made trial orders of several tonnes of fresh and chilled shrimp from his farm for the past few months ago to distribute at its outlets in Thailand.

The French retailer could purchase as many as 10,000 tonnes a year from the farm for local outlets and some outlets overseas if the inspections, to be conducted sometime in January, show satisfactory results, he said.

The volume is considered big for Kaset Somboon Farm alone and it could arrange for other farmers to help it fulfill the shipments.

"Shrimp farmers now have more experience in making contracts with foreign food service providers themselves without using any brokers," he said.

Another operator, Chanthaburi-based Sureerath Farm, has supplied organic shrimp to Tops supermarkets and has now extended its distribution channels to Villa Supermarkets and Siam Paragon.

Kaset Somboon Farm and its allied farms also sell chilled shrimp to food markets in Busan and Seoul, Korea at up to 30-40 tonnes a day.

To meet freshness and chemical-free requirements, notably malachite residue, shrimp exported to South Korea are shipped on Thai Airways Internationals' late-night flights to ensure that they reach Korean markets in the morning, Mr Vanich said.

"New buyers in the pipeline are from China, Japan, Israel and Middle Eastern countries who want to buy chilled shrimp from farmers directly, not frozen ones that have a different taste and are mostly supplied from coldstorage companies," he said.

The Fisheries Department has been strongly encouraging farmers to enter food services markets abroad by themselves.

"The markets should be anywhere that takes less than 10 hours to transport shrimp," a department official said. "The fewer the better as some markets such as provinces along the coastline prefer consuming live shrimp."

To promote this export channel, the Fisheries Department has entered agreements with buying countries, such as a mutual-recognition agreement with South Korean fisheries authorities to speed product verification procedures.

The department also aims to see all 27,000 of Thailand's shrimp farms meet Good Agricultural Practice standards or better for marine shrimp farming this year, from about 21,000 at present.

The department estimates the export volume of shrimp to the food services industry to be 30,000 tonnes out of the estimated total of 370,000 tonnes of shrimp exports from Thailand this year.