News

July 23, 2008

Australian Bight and Destiny Abalone Locked In Battle For Farmed Abalone Market

By Our Agriprod Expert in Oz

Some people believe abalone is an ideal replacement for rubber car tyres. Others believe it is a shellfish delicacy appreciated only by the fussiest gourmets. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, though what it tastes and feels like is utterly irrelevant when abalone is looked on as a business, and the best place to do that is in Australia where an abalone war is breaking out. In the blue corner, with “ocean-grown” as the sales spiel, is Australian Bight Abalone. In the red corner, with “Asia first” as its sales spiel is Destiny Abalone Group. Both are chasing the same consumers, Asian diners prepared to pay fat prices for their favourite marine snail.

Australian Bight Abalone (and that is bight as in large geographic landform, not bite as in chomp, chomp) has its claims to future fortune at Anxious Bay, and other isolated fishing communities on the western side of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. It is here that it is developing a “sea-farming” venture which marries the pristine waters of the Southern Ocean with the palates of consumers.

Destiny Abalone Group (not to be known as DAG, which has another meaning in Oz) is going...