Ready-to-eat gourmet seafood

Chances are, you may have eaten gourmet instant seafood last Lent without knowing it.

Consider Wendy’s shrimp patties or A & W’s fish fillets or Padi’s Point’s seafood balls. All these seafood offerings were produced by Seachamp International under the Polar brand.

Polar products currently sold in supermarkets range from stuffed milkfish to fried squid rings to crab cakes and fish pop sticks. Prices range from P60 to P160 a box. The most expensive product is stuffed milkfish.

Since its introduction last June, sales have been growing by 20% to 30% a month. "We’re targeting monthly sales of P1 million, which should increase as consumers become more aware of our products – which are export-quality ready-to-eat fish with no extenders. All the consumer has to do when he or she goes home is to reheat our products for a few minutes in the microwave, in the oven, or on a stove," said Seachamp vice-president for operations and marketing Anna Marie Sy.

Reverse expansion

Seachamp has been an exporter of fresh and ready-to-cook seafood preparations to Japan for the past 10 years. "If we could sell samurai balls in Japan, why couldn’t we do it here? That’s what Seachamp management asked," Sy said.

For starters, the company began taste-testing time-consuming Philippine favorites like stuffed milkfish. The tests were done over and over again until the company felt confident that it had the winning taste formula.

The production process was equally exacting. "I would not come up with food that I cannot serve my children," said Sy.

Using the same process in preparing its exports products, Seachamp uses the freshest seafoods that it can get from its six buying stations nationwide. Every batch of Polar products goes through microbial testing. The working area is kept clean with constant checks on the water and tables used in cleaning and preparing the seafoods.

These are then placed in a blast freezer for about two hours until it reaches negative 18 degrees centigrade to retain the taste and smell of the sea food. "In our process, there is also no need for extenders," Sy said.

Marketing

On the retail end, Seachamp has been aggressively pushing its Polar brand through taste sampling in supermarkets. It has also come up with an attractive packaging aimed at ensuring its products’ quality and in attracting the eye of the consumer. As it celebrates its first year, Seachamp already smells a winner. It has begun exporting its stuffed milkfish to the United States.