Shifting post production patterns: exploring changes in New Zealand's seafood processing industry

This paper examines the changing nature of New Zealand's seafood companies' production practices. The past 15 years has seen the offshore outsourcing of post-harvest fish gain unprecedented momentum. The growth in offshore processing is a further stage in an increasingly globalised fisheries value chain. Fish is head and gutted, frozen and then transported to processing sites in China where it is thawed, value-added processed and refrozen for export to the original sourcing country or third country markets. Reasons advanced by the industry for this shift in production practices include quota reductions, increasing production costs and the sale of trawlers.