Thai sea food giant LENK expand its window in Bangladesh and acquired local Fahim Seafoods Pvt Ltd to source more black tiger shrimp to premium global customers at Bangkok.
The company, which is already one of the top traders of black tiger shrimp sourced from Bangladesh, launched a subsidiary firm, Luna Seafoods, in the South Asian country in 2020.
“With this new operation and brand, LENK Group is aiming to set advanced quality standards in the entire Bangladesh seafood sector, meanwhile exploring new global sales markets, in particular Asia, for the introduction of these ‘farm-to-fork’ premium-quality black tiger shrimps,” the company said in a press release.
Founded by Heiko Werner Lenk in 2003, the LENK Group is comprised of Lenk Frozen Foods (Asia) Co. Ltd and Lenk Seafood Services GmbH, in Bargteheide, Germany. The company sources and sells seafood including shrimp, cephalopods, clams, and fish from across South and Southeast Asia, with subsidiaries in several countries. Its primary market is Europe.
LENK’s purchase of Batiaghata, Bangladesh-based Fahim Seafoods, which owns more than 100 hectares of semi-intensive farms and operates a shrimp processing plant in Khulna, Bangladesh, gives the company a bigger reach into the company’s shrimp supply chain. The company produced around 200 metric tons of shrimp in 2017, according to ShrimpTails.
“Being one of the leading market actors of Bangladeshi black tiger shrimp, LENK has started to build its own integrated supply chain to assure freshest raw material black tiger shrimp, to be merchandized into high-end markets,” the company said.
Luna Seafoods has received funding from German development agency GIZ to organize fragmented shrimp-farming areas in Bangladesh into clusters, with the goal of streamlining the supply chain and improving the cold-chain process to improve the quality of the shrimp produced. LENK Group foresees the Khulna-based processing plant to be a central intake hub for the increased production from this project.
Luna’s Bangladesh operation is also in line to be the first Aquaculture Stewardship Council Farmer Certification Pilot Project, under which Luna shrimp will be a field partner in achieving up to 1,500 metric tons of finish product certified as sustainable by the ASC. The project is supported by the Solidaridad Network, and Luna’s contribution to the project will be 850 metric tons of shrimp.