A prawn superpower rises
Ecuador’s farmers have embraced technology to great effect
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The humble prawn is big money for Ecuador, which sold more than US$8 billion worth last year, more than India, Vietnam and Indonesia combined.
ST PHOTO: EUGENE GOH
The Economist
The production of prawns in Ecuador is lean manufacturing incarnate. Vast rectangular pools tessellate the Guayas delta, centre of the aquaculture belt. Its brackish waters hide billions of translucent bodies. Larvae are cultivated in greenhouse-style hatcheries, fattened up in open-air ponds, hoovered into lorries, then taken to packaging plants where they are frozen. Inefficiencies are constantly hunted down. Containers filled with bricks of prawn known as “HOSO” (head-on, shell-on) cross the oceans, mostly east to west across the Pacific.
“It is like a factory,” says Wolfgang Harten of Grupo Almar, the country’s second-largest producer.
