Seafood Packaging
Our country is fortunate in terms of its aquatic product potential, thanks to its climate, soil structure, and the fact that it is surrounded by seas on three sides, as well as its lakes, dams, rivers, and spring waters. Turkey has a coastline of 8,333 km and approximately 26 million hectares of usable aquatic product production areas. Of this area, approximately: 95% is covered by seas (24,607,200 ha), 1.3% by dam lakes (342,377 ha), 3.5% by natural lakes (906,118 ha), and around 0.1% by ponds (15,500 ha).
As the number of dams and ponds constructed for irrigation and energy purposes increases, Turkey’s aquatic product production area, which constitutes around 5% of the total, covers 1,263,995 ha in total. Additionally, there are approximately 178,000 km of rivers.
The four seas surrounding Turkey provide a rich diversity of fish species due to their different characteristics:
– 165 fish species in the Black Sea
– 200 fish species in the Sea of Marmara
– 300 fish species in the Aegean Sea
– 500 fish species in the Mediterranean Sea
Although it has been reported that these seas host approximately these numbers of fish species, many of these species are now nearing extinction.
In terms of aquatic product production, Turkey ranks 33rd among 161 countries worldwide, 4th among EU countries, and 3rd among Mediterranean countries. Aquatic products, which are one of the most important sources of animal protein in human nutrition, have a production potential that is not limitless. As the population grows, production cannot continue to increase indefinitely. Therefore, after reaching a certain level, the amount of aquatic products per person will begin to decrease, and demand will be limited by the amount of production.
Until a few years ago, seafood was mostly consumed fresh. Today, however, seafood is processed and preserved through
various methods such as cooling, packaging, salting, canning, smoking, drying, and pickling before being offered to consumers. In Turkey, in recent years, freezing and rapid cooling technologies, as well as advanced processing technologies, have become widespread, allowing for the production of canned, smoked, and other processed seafood products.
At this stage, we would like to introduce many new technological applications related to pre-processing, processing, and packaging. With some of these applications already in use in various sectors, we are opening the door to a whole new world…
For highly perishable ready-to-eat foods, it is crucial to ensure product safety by preventing the development of pathogenic organisms and maintaining microbiological safety through a combination of controlled heating/cooling conditions, minimal processing, and storage.
Minimally processed foods are produced using a series of modern technologies that aim to make as few changes to the food as possible, while ensuring an adequate shelf life throughout the process from the producer to the consumer. These products, which contain very little or no preservatives, undergo light thermal treatments to maintain a freshly-cooked taste and represent a new concept in ready-to-eat food consumption.
We believe that adding value to aquatic products is an inevitable reality, and we think that it is the right time to prepare an action plan and embark on this journey with a professional team for the work that needs to be done.
