Rainforest to retail fish, farm produce at St Vincent complex

Jamaican company Rainforest Seafoods will be retailing local and imported fish and agricultural produce at its plant in Calliaqua, St Vincent.

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Saboto Caesar told Parliament, however, that Rainforest’s retail outlet would complement rather than compete with the Calliaqua Fish Market, located just hundreds of yards away, as well as persons who retail agricultural produce nearby.

Rainforest opened the 25,000-square-foot Calliaqua seafood-processing facility, called ‘Big Blue’, in July 2022 after investing EC$10 million in the plant, which featured a quarter-million pounds of cold storage, blast freezers, best-in-class cold chain, along with cutting-edge equipment that would allow at-source retail packaging and would ensure the product presentation appeals to various international markets and customers.

The company was granted a 15-year tax break, among other concessions, by the St Vincent and the Grenadines government in 2022.

Opposition legislator Daniel Cummings said that Rainforest was also granted duty-free concessions to establish the plant for fish and shellfish, and enquired of Caesar whether the company would be required to separate the proposed retail outlet from the original processing plant, so that the duty-free concessions are not extended to the new entity; or whether the company had been granted additional duty-free concessions to accommodate the proposed outlet.

Import permit

Caesar told Parliament that Rainforest would be sourcing snapper, mahi-mahi, tuna, lobster and conch locally.

“And hundreds of local fishers will be able to benefit from marketing their fish at this facility, which is a retail facility. So, the facility that is being constructed will be selling those items … . The facility will also be selling imported fish,” the minister said, adding that the company will have to pay duties on the imported fish.

“And it’s only if the fish cannot be sourced locally will they be permitted to import the fish,” he expounded.

“So, it is anticipated [that] whenever they are importing fish from any source market that, quite naturally, they have to come to the Ministry of Agriculture to get the import permit, and we will have a conversation there with them as it pertains to the sourcing, and ensuring that we give the first right to the local fishers.”

Caesar said that the retail section of Rainforest will also have “a dry section, as they call it, where they’ll be having a farmer’s market, and they will be making available local produce.

“And 100 farmers are expected to benefit,” he added.

The minister also reported that said Rainforest employs 120 people during peak operations, and will hire five more to work at the retail outlet.

“And in the aggregate, you are going to have approximately 250 producers, between farmers and fishers, benefiting,” Caesar said.

– CMC