Jul 24

Fonda fish farm happy under Italian owner

Business,  24 Jul 2017  / By Sta

Lucija – The Fonda fish farm has managed to expand as well as preserve its strategy and jobs since being joined by an Italian strategic owner a year ago.  The family-run business, which specialises in breeding top-quality sea bass, partnered with Vale Ca’ Zuliani from Ravena a year ago in order to keep the business running.  “The mood is very positive. We’ve kept all the jobs, our company’s strategy,” the director Irena Fonda has told the STA, also praising good two-way cooperation in transfer of know-how.

The fish farm employs 18 people plus seasonal workers. The Italian partner has let them preserve their quality-based direction and approach in the supply of customers.  “We have broader shoulders than we used to have,” says Fonda, adding that they have managed to expand the farm capacity after initially failing to get the support from a creditor bank.  Despite the red figures at the moment owing to the fact that the fish is not big enough to be sold yet, the cash flow is encouraging, she said.

The farm focuses on quality rather than quantity, aiming to sell most of the bass locally. The fish quality increases the further north you go in the Adriatic, and “we are the northern-most fish farm in the Adriatic”.  At first they sold virtually all of their fish abroad, while 13 years since launching the business and ten years under the Fonda brand, most of the fish is sold in Slovenia, and increasingly many to Austria.  An important factor has been education of customers through guided tours of the fish farm. “People come here, have a good time for an hour, while they also learn quite a lot.”

The director has noted a change in people’s mentality. As the start of their business, Slovenians ate 5.3 kilos of fish pert capita a year, a number that has doubled to ten kilos since.  Still, the figures remain low when compared to more than 25 kilos in Italy and more than 44 kilos of fish per capita consumed in Spain.  One of the farm’s plans is to place Slovenian fish on the menus at Slovenian schools and kindergartens. “Kids like good fish,” says Fonda, adding that one problem is public procurement rules.

Natural ethos nets success for Slovenian fish farmers

By Kester Eddy, Financial Times, June 11, 2013

_fonda_badge_3Irena Fonda leans over the side of her boat and throws a handful of food pellets into the waters of the northern Adriatic. After a pause, the water is suddenly alive with fish, thrashing just below the surface. “They are not right today; they are normally waiting for the boat. It’s probably because of the storm,” Ms Fonda shouts above the wind. The boat is just inside the Slovenian waters of the Bay of Piran, in the northern Adriatic: ahead is an array of circular fish cages, up to 12m in diameter, holding around 1m sea bass that Ms Fonda and her brother raise from the age of seven months to five years. A few metres behind us is the maritime border with Croatia.

There are scores of aquaculture – fish farm – operations in the Mediterranean, but none quite like the Fonda Piran Sea Bass farm, which is small, currently yielding a mere 50 tonnes of fish annually. The industry benchmark for profitability is five times that, and farms in Greece and Turkey are typically 500-1,000 tonnes or more.

Fishing for profit: Ugo Fonda applied his expertise in marine biology to fish farming. After his death, the company has continued to be run by his daughter Irena and her brother Lean, both biologists

The Fondas, Irena and brother Lean, are biologists, who – with their now deceased father – in 2001 took the profits from their underwater engineering business and turned their scientific minds to producing a better-quality, healthier sea bass than those of the large commercial farms.

To prove the point, Ms Fonda points to the depths. “You see, the nets are overgrown with algae. Most farms use antifouling agents, but these are bad for nature and I’m sure it’s bad for the fish,” she says.

But eschewing chemical methods means using divers to clean the nets manually, a time-consuming, expensive process. Nonetheless, the Fondas apply this ethos to every aspect of the operation, from identifying the highest-quality fingerlings – juvenile fish – bought from hatcheries in France and Italy, to sourcing the very best fish-food producers.

They also harvest the fish in supercooled brine – effectively putting them to sleep – to cause the least stress. The result is sea bass with a lean, tasty body that has been tested to reveal mercury levels at just 4 per cent of the legal limit. Despite prices of between €16 and €25 per kg at the farm shop – a 100 per cent premium over sea bass from large commercial farms – demand is outstripping supply. For good reason, says Curt-Daniel Scheffler, executive chef at the Kempinski Palace Hotel, in the nearby resort of Portoro.

“Irena Fonda presented her fish during the hotel’s pre-opening phase [in 2008]. I could see straight away that this was a very ambitious company, with a high-quality [product], very different from ‘factory fish’, with automatic feeding and chemical net treatment,” he says. Fonda sea bass has been on the Palace menu ever since. But widespread success was initially elusive. Ms Fonda admits that their original assumption – that the public would recognise and pay for high-quality fish – was extremely naive. “People just saw our fish was more expensive, and asked why. It was very disappointing,” she says.

en__fonda-family-lean-and-irena

Irena and Lean Fonda amidst fish farm pools

At first, almost the entire production went to Italy, which has a more discerning fish-loving public. But even with the higher prices achieved there, the operation was unsustainable. The team reviewed their strategy, selling via a newly created website, Web Store Fonda, guaranteeing the freshness of each fish with an individual tag, dating the catch. They also offered to deliver fish all over Slovenia in special boxes, packed with ice.

Almost overnight, a public that had shunned sea bass on the slab carrying a 20 per cent premium began changing its mind. Having won a string of domestic entrepreneurial awards for the Fondas’ efforts, the brand is now well established in Slovenia, which accounts for 70 per cent of sales. Yet the business still struggles. Despite official policies to encourage private enterprise, a project to double the size of the farm was delayed for three years by ministerial red tape. And the banks have tightened credit lines – a near-crippling blow to a business that needs four to five years’ investment before any return appears.

But as the Fondas’ fame spread, an increasing number of people asked to see the farm. “At first, we just welcomed visitors, but it began taking too much time. So we started charging, showing tourists the cages, feeding the fish, and then having a little degustation afterwards, with local wines and produce,” Ms Fonda says. Around 1,200 tourists last year brought in €40,000 – a small proportion of total farm revenues of €1m – but it needed no new investment. “We need three lorry loads of feed per month in summer, at about €30,000 a time. That has to be paid,” she says.

The Fondas have invested in new equipment and educational material, expecting to double numbers to about 2,500 visitors this year. But there are limits. “It’s a good way to add value to our brand, but we do not have the structures for mass tourism. We take each guest personally to the farm with the boat; it takes time,” she says.

en__fonda-family-lean,-ugo-and-irena

Lean, Ugo and Irena Fonda

The Fonda family’s battles with bureaucracy, banks and even their own naivety in areas of business outside their expertise is a common enough experience for entrepreneurs in the former communist states of central and eastern Europe, says Andreas Antonopoulos, rector of the University of New York in Prague and professor of entrepreneurship.

Governments and ministries across the region struggle to understand entrepreneurs – that is if they care in the first place, Prof Antonopoulos told the Financial Times. “In my experience, [in the past] they did not really care, and now that the importance of entrepreneurship and what it results in for the local economies is starting to dawn on policy makers, they have limited understanding of how to help out,” he says.

There is much these governments can do to cut bureaucracy and ease excessive or sometimes contradictory regulations, he says. “The most obvious starting point for governments wanting to help is to stay out of the way, and facilitate entrepreneurs to spend all their energy on their ventures, ie cut red tape, taxation, complexity and bureaucracy, indeed, minimise interaction with the state. “They should try to see it from the entrepreneur’s point of view; estimate how much time, effort and money a new venture would need to spend on state-related tasks, and seek to minimise that cost,” Prof Antonopoulos adds.

Entrepreneurs are turned off by the amount of paperwork involved in seeking state subsidies, he says. “Monies are rarely put to genuine good use, although I’ve seen a couple of more promising schemes around.” The situation is slightly better in the western Visegrad Four states (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland), where entrepreneurs generally face fewer hurdles than further east, primarily due to the more politically and economically mature societies. “These countries have more developed domestic markets, somewhat easier access to capital and more advanced legal systems and start-up communities,” Prof Antonopoulos says.

Loading

written by admin \\ tags: , ,

Nov 08

Lightning Strikes – Suffolk County

Hudson River

Hudson River

From the August 2007 Conservationist
By Lt. Ken Didion

ECOs Vernon Fonda and Jason Curinga were checking fishermen at a popular spot in Shoreham as a thunderstorm approached. The officers had separated in order to complete their checks before the storm arrived. ECO (Environmental Conservation Officer) Fonda was talking with a fisherman when a person ran toward him screaming for help. ECO Fonda ran to where he saw a woman lying on the ground. The womans family members said she had been standing in the water when lightning struck nearby. A quick check revealed that the woman was not breathing and did not have a pulse. Officer Fonda immediately began CPR and the woman began to breathe on her own. When ECO Curinga arrived to assist, the woman lost her pulse and ceased breathing again. ECO Fonda resumed CPR, assisted by an EMT who had just arrived. The two rescuers revived the woman, and she was transported by helicopter to Stony Brook Hospital.

Loading

written by admin \\ tags: , ,

Aug 30

Lawyer violated stream protection law, police say

The Daily Freeman – August 30, 2008

Mount Tremper, CT – A Mount Tremper man was arrested after operating a backhoe in a protected stream, despite repeated warnings from state Environmental Conservation Police to cease his activities, police said Friday.

Esopus Creek in Mount Tremper

On Aug. 6, Environmental Conservation Police received a complaint from the Shandaken Town Zoning Office about a backhoe in the Esopus Creek, which is protected by the state, off Plank Road. Police charged Algernon Reese, an attorney, with the misdemeanor of disturbing a protected stream, punishable by up to a year in jail or a $10,000 fine, and released him with an appearance ticket for Shandaken Town Court.

Police received another complaint on Wednesday, and found Reese again working at the stream with construction equipment and a small team of contractors. Police said Reese obstructed Environmental Conservation Officer Vernon Fonda‘s investigation, and was arrested.

Reese was charged with the misdemeanors of obstructing governmental administration, disturbing a protected stream, and violating a general prohibition against pollution. “The charges are pending, and he’s right back there 20 days later,” said Lt. Deming Lindsley. “The blatant disregard for what the law indicates makes us very concerned.”

When Fonda attempted to interview the contractors, Reese prevented him, saying he represented them as counsel and forbade them from speaking to him, Lindsley said. Lindsley said that it appeared that Reese was trying to control the stream and prevent flooding from reaching his property. His property lies in the Esopus floodplain.

“He’s put in concrete barries, built mounds, dug trenches,” Lindsley said. “He’s fighting against Mother Nature.” Lindsley said Reese had been “observed comitting violations” for nearly 10 years, but had used his skills as an attorney to fend off accusations. Reese was arrraigned in Shandaken Town Court and released on $5,000 bail.

Loading

written by admin \\ tags: , ,

Mar 18

Calls for mining to be exempt from environment laws

ABC News – Mar 18, 2008

A group of landowners from Adelaide River south of Darwin are calling for changes to legislation regulating exploration and mining.  Dr Michael Fonda says rural residents are concerned about the potential impact of increased exploration for uranium.  He says rural communities should have the same protection from resource development as urban areas.

Adelaide River south of Darwin

Dr Fonda says the group is lobbying for exploration to be prevented on larger blocks, as part of the review of the Northern Territory Mining Act, and is calling for the Environmental Protection Board to consider introducing Environmental Impact Statements for exploration licences.  “The EPA is at the moment having its legislation revised and we think it would be a good idea to have environmental impact statements compulsory in the process of new mining applications, which they aren’t at the moment.”

But the former chief executive of the Northern Territory Minerals Council Kezia Purick says the suggested changes would prevent access to outback Australia would unfairly compromise the resource industry.  “No company would ever actually get on the ground if they had to go through a full EIS, bearing in mind that and Environmental Impact Statement can take upwards of 12 to 18 months to complete and it can cost upwards of nearly $1 million.  “Exploration can be a high risk activity and it’s high risk high reward, but it can also be high risk high loss.”

Loading

written by admin \\ tags: , ,