Scenario of Frozen Food sector

After ready-made garments, frozen food is the second largest export industry in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has enough resources available to meet the demands of the international and local markets. There are approximately 148 government and private shore-based fish processing plants, which produce various types of yields - fresh water shell on, seawater shell on, peeled and deveined, peeled and un-deveined shrimps.

Sector Overview
•    Encouraged and promoted by the government
•    Farming, Processing and Exporting industry mostly dominated by small business owners,
•    Government steps to improve quality of frozen food,
•    Government offering of 15% cash incentive to frozen food exporters,
•    Exported products: Frozen shrimp and prawn, fresh and chilled fish, frozen fillets of fish, shark fins, dehydrated fish, live crab and turtles, fish meals and crushed.
•    Sub sectors involved in the frozen fish industry: Hatcheries, Sustainable aquaculture technology, Feed Meals Plants, dispensation unit for value added products, etc.

There are 148 fish dispensation plants in Bangladesh and 88 amongst those are approved by the government of Bangladesh. The rest 74 are approved by the European Union. There are about 130 shrimp hatcheries, which produces 12,000-15,000 m shrimps. Shrimp farming is done on approximately 170,000 hectare of land, whereas 100,000 hectare is still unused. Bangladesh earns about 500 million US dollar every year from export of frozen food.  During the last decade, the frozen food industry of Bangladesh has earned a good reputation globally.

Adapting new technology and training a skilled workforce will definitely make this industry bigger than it is.