Taprobane Seafood Group has become the first Sri Lankan company certified to offer three-star Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) shrimp.
The Colombo-based company recently attained the certification from the Global Seafood Alliance for its seafood processing plant, shrimp farm and shrimp hatchery. As well as shrimp, the processing plant also handles wild-caught seafood, including crabmeat, squid and cuttlefish.
“As the pioneer of vannamei shrimp in Sri Lanka and one of the largest and most fully integrated seafood companies, we are delighted to have finalised our BAP certification,” said Tim O’Reilly, managing director and owner of Taprobane.
SPF vannamei was only approved throughout Sri Lanka in June 2020, so the industry is still in its infancy. “We felt it was important to move our organisation and hopefully the industry toward BAP certification,” said Mr O’Reilly.
“Taprobane works with some of the leading US customers for our pasteurised crab meat, so we knew that until we had BAP certification it was difficult to enter into the US market. I was especially impressed by the social compliance component of the audit, and I think US buyers of BAP-certified products should sleep very well,” he added.
There are now more than 3,000 BAP-certified farms, processing plants, hatcheries and feed mills worldwide, with the farms producing 2.68 million tonnes of seafood annually. Shrimp and salmon are the leading species by volume.
