Pee Dee might net a processing plant
Sunday, September 03, 2006 - charleston.net

HILTON HEAD ISLAND - The key to saving South Carolina's shrimping industry may be a proposed shrimp processing plant in Williamsburg County.

"We hope and believe that this can turn it around," said Georgia Tisdale, marketing director of the South Carolina Shrimpers Association. "It could create a brand new market for shrimp and help us stay in business."

At a meeting Thursday on Johns Island, AgraTech International, the company building the plant, will attempt to broker a deal with shrimpers to keep their product in the state, said Richard DeMarco, AgraTech's chief executive officer.

Most of the financing for the $5 million project is in place and the company hopes to open the plant by next summer, DeMarco said.

The plant would clean, process and package shrimp for commercial resale and operate a separate plant nearby that would take discarded shell material and make it into a product called chitosan, which has a number of potential commercial and biomedical uses.

This decade has been bad for shrimpers. Cheaper imports have pushed down the price of shrimp, while rising fuel and equipment costs eat away at any profits.

And without a local processing plant, shrimpers have to pay more to ship to the Gulf Coast.

In South Carolina, an estimated 75 percent of shrimp boats that were operating five years ago are gone. In 2000, the states shrimper's hauled in more than 6 million pounds. In 2005, the catch was just more than 2 million pounds.

Having a processing plant close by could get better prices for shrimpers and breathe some life into the industry, said Tonya Hudson-DeSalve, who manages the retail portion of Benny Hudson Seafood on Hilton Head Island.

"I've got shrimpers falling by the wayside left and right," she said. "Most of these guys are barely breaking even, and many of them are losing money with the higher price of fuel and the low cost of imports."

Shrimp processed at the Williamsburg County plant could also be specially marketed with restaurants and grocers willing to pay higher prices for certified shrimp harvested in area waters.

"I would hope it could help bump up prices and help distributing this local product, which we all think is so much better than the imports you see served at so many restaurants on Hilton Head," Hudson-DeSalve said.

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