The milkfish company

In its export markets, Alsons Aqua Technologies, Inc. has billed itself as the milkfish or bangus company of the Philippines. There’s basis for such a boast.

Through subsidiaries, Alsons Aqua operates an integrated business. AquaSur Corp. and Finfish Hatchery Inc., for example, operate fries hatcheries. Finfish alone produces 500 million tons of milkfish fries a year in its sea cages in Alabel, General Santos. "Our fries have an average survival rate of 85% to 90%," said Alsons Aqua president Alex Alcantara.

Alsons Fish Hatchery Inc. sells fries to other hatcheries and fishponds, including those based in Pangasinan, where Bonoan milkfish is bred. Alsons Fish also sells to Alson Aqua, which grows the milkfish and retails under the Saranggani Bay brand name.

"We don’t have any major competitors abroad right now," said Alsons Aqua officer-in-charge Jaime To. "Taiwan milkfish is, however, cheaper than Philippine milkfish and may eventually eat into our market if we don’t watch out."

Diversification

With more competition in sight, Alsons Aqua is looking into more ways to sell milkfish. "We intend to go into either canning or bottling of cooked and flavored milkfish by the end of this year or early this year, " said Alcantara. The company is now working out arrangements with Dipolog, the principal local source of sardines in bottles.

Alsons Aqua is also diversifying into the commercial production and export of higher value fishery products such as sea bass or apahap, yellow wax pompret or whitish pompano, red grouper or lapu lapu, sergeant fish or covia, and mangrove jack snappers or mangagat.

Ironically, Alson’s Sarangani Bay milkfish is more popular abroad than in the Philippines. More than 80% of the company’s milkfish production or 10 containers a month (with each container weighing 20 tons) is exported fresh frozen to the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and other Asian countries. Fresh frozen means that, upon harvest, the milkfish is frozen right at the shore of Alabel.

Aside from fresh frozen milkfish, the company also exports smoked and marinated milkfish as well as all belly. Historically, Alsons prices its finished products at 10 to 15% higher than regular market prices.

Weak local market

The local market for milkfish is weak. "Consumers have the traditional mindset that fish sold in wet markets are fresh even though these are already a day old (having been unloaded at the Navotas Port from the Visayas or Mindanao) and then send to the bulungans or wholesalers in the evening before they are brought to the wet market," said To.

There are also many Filipinos who do not want to eat milkfish because of the taste of mud or gilit from freshwater ponds. "Alsons doesn’t have that problem because we use brackish water or a mixture of salt and fresh water in our sea cages," he said.

In the local market, Alsons supplies its vacuum packed milkfish products to hotels and restaurants, airline caterers and premier supermarkets such as Rustan’s and Shoemart. It is also looking at the possibility of further processing milkfish into other ready-to-eat forms such as stuffed milkfish or relleno.

"We’re slowly developing the local market," said To.

At the recently concluded Food Expo, Alson held a cooking demonstration and distributed recipes using the milkfish as a main ingredient such as milkfish fillet in teriyaki sauce and steamed fish in sweet and sour sauce.

"We want to show the versatility of milkfish. There is more to milkfish than fried, grilled, smoked or marinated," To said.

Those who sampled the milkfish after the cooking demo couldn’t have agreed more.