Winds of change.
Fishing businesses are buffeted by challenges across the board.
Intense and important regulation, demanding quota management systems, an aging fleet infrastructure and human resource headwinds are just part of the ongoing conversation.
So it goes without saying, the global fishing industry has experienced radical change over the last few decades. In particular, fish quota management mechanisms, based on scientific, industry and government inputs have transformed into sophisticated systems for ensuring the sustainability of the wild fish catch.
These demands on our Australasian fleet have provided significant financial, cultural and social challenges for industry players of all sizes.
Today’s fishing companies, from a small inshore fleet to large deep ocean vessels, have to respond to environmental demands while remaining operationally viable businesses.
Despite head winds, the industry faces an exciting future full of opportunity - but a future that will continue to require the deepest commitment to sustainable fishing practices, effective management of precious marine resources, and partnership with all stakeholders involved in protecting our marine environment for future generations.
The role of Government supporting smarter fishing
There’s no question that autoline equipment represents a sizeable investment for smaller fishing vessels. And we have to face up to an aging fleet, and an economic model with margins that don’t encourage new fishing entrants.
While government already plays a substantial part in our industry, by regulating activity to meet our shared social, cultural and economic priorities in the marine environment, we wonder at the possibilities of greater partnership between our industry and government to help transcend our challenges.
Beauline would contend that the future of our fishing fleet depends on more and more boats switching from less sustainable catch methods to autolining.
While we understand that in our current political economic environment the idea of subsidising industries makes little sense, we do advocate for government to consider helping the fishing industry transition to longer term fishing systems that fit with our social priorities.
While not all fish quotas are longline appropriate, we believe greater uptake of autolining will result in a more successful, sustainable industry.
The consumer is number 1.
We see the consumer as playing THE central role in defining our industry moving forward.
Our commitment to longlining as a higher quality catch method (seen on many restaurant menus as ‘line caught’) fits perfectly with increasing customer demand for both a premium eating experience and the highest standard of food provenance and tracking.
Imagine yourself sitting in a restaurant in London, Auckland, Wellington or New York on a Saturday night. We can now track iron extracted from Australia, to steel forged and stretched in Sweden to hooks shaped and produced in China, then used to catch the fish on your plate in New Zealand waters by the FVNZ, using dissolving snoods, by Captain Nate Smith at 12 noon GMT Friday. Further, why not add a $5 donation to your bill as a contribution to our ‘Save our Shark’ campaign and the Sustainable Ocean Society. Not only have you eaten an exceptional dish, but as a customer we’ve given you the opportunity to be a part of our progressive solution system for the industry and added value to your experience beyond the meal.
Now that’s a future worth biting into.
The Politics of Premium.
Businesses up and down New Zealand are pushing towards more sustainable, lower resource/ higher value products and services for local and international markets.
The good old days of growing and exporting sheer volumes of produce have been numbered for some time now.
Whether it’s attracting higher spending per day tourists (as opposed to backpackers and freedom campers), shifting our cattle to higher value per kilo breeds, to investing in innovative, globally relevant software-led IP solutions (like Xero) - our commercial community increasingly understands the value of chasing value-add.
Our fishing industry is no different.
Unless we search for higher returns per unit of fish, using methods that sync with our stakeholders and customers, we will continue to suffer relatively low margin returns, under-investment in our fleet infrastructure, a decline in viable participants and a potential collapse in our social licence to operate.