The Fishery Industries Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is receiving numerous inquiries on specific data concerning planning, design and operation of fresh fish handling facilities from governments and Industries mainly of countries developing their fishery industries. In addition, requests for direct assistance in carrying out prefeasibility studies, occasionally of relatively simple nature, in the field of fresh fish handling are received, and in order to provide the assistance often highly specialized engineers have to be engaged since only they have access to some of the required basic engineering data. Also, for other feasibility studies and banking projects in this subject matter field the required engineering data are not always readily at hand.
As a matter of fact, the engineering data concerning fresh fish handling are either scattered in different publications or exist only in the files of individual engineers as they were never published. Considerable effort is in practice wasted by individual engineers to construct the required data for their own use, which results in both heavy duplication of work and often inaccurate data.
This publication is intended to assist field staff in the selection or specification, costing (both capital and running) and planning of facilities or equipment concerned with fresh fish handling and storage. It is not intended as a code of practice. It is hoped that it will help to satisfy requests for information more speedily, to contribute to improved accuracy and to save on efforts on parallel construction of data.
This document does not pretend to include all the relevant data at this stage. It is recognized that a complete presentation would require time and resources which could not be justified for an initial effort, and that some data, such as costs are subject to fast changes. However, the intention of the document is to serve as a core guide to which additional data will be added by the users in the future. The users are, therefore, cordially requested to communicate their comments and all the additional data they find useful to the Fishery Industries Division. FAO, 00100 Rome, Italy, for later incorporation in an improved, more permanent edition of the document.
The publication is not the result of original research by the author but Is based on information available from manufacturers of equipment, from commercial plant operators and from previously published material by numerous organizations, particularly the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Torry Research Station, Aberdeen, UK, and The White Fish Authority, Industrial Development Unit, Hull, UK.
It must be stressed most strongly that the costings given in the report are based on UK costs for 1979. Local costs of labour, land, services and costs of delivery and erection can significantly affect these costs. Given an appreciation of local costs relative to the UK, however, these figures can serve as a basis for budget costing and planning failing any better sources of information.
