In a significant boost for the local economy, St Helena Bay has inaugurated a state-of-the-art 600 metric tonne fish meal plant, a project that promises to revolutionise the fishing industry in the region. 

Spearheaded by the African Pioneer Group (APG), this ambitious investment not only aims to enhance processing efficiency and product quality but also to create job opportunities and foster skills development within the community.

APG Chief Executive Stephen Dondolo said the investment was not easy and faced challenges, but was eventually made possible through strong collaborative efforts.

Dondolo said they are committed to investments that will create more opportunities for job creation and skills development.

“This investment has been a challenging one and a good challenge for us. We have our bank, which is Standard Bank, and we have the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), where, for the first time, I was sitting in a meeting fighting with two banks that wanted to finance us. 

“The reason why we wanted to install a new 600MT line was to bring in new technology. Secondly, was to improve our efficiency and for the quality of our fish meal to be tops. We have realised that we have just been catching (according to a certain ratio). People who are here from the industry understand that when you add another processing facility, it means that you alleviate the problem of the peak time of catching,” said Dondolo.

IDC’s lead dealmaker, Kamogelo Litheko, said they are proud to have collaborated on the vision and installation of the 600MT. 

“As the IDC, we have not found ourselves very successful in funding aquaculture as an industry. We have found ourselves in regions such as Saldanha Bay, where we are told that the fish here is good. (However) having partnered with Pioneer Fishing and entrusting us to be their funding partner is a step we believe that we can work around,” said Litheko.

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister, Willie Aucamp, said in his keynote address that the plant at the Sandy Point Harbour, which cost R170 million, “is so much more than an expansion of processing capacity”.

Minister Aucamp said they would be fair to the St Helena Bay fisher community. 

“We must be fair. It is not right that somebody who lives in St Helena Bay, that has been born here, cannot make a living out of what you’ve got. It is not right that somebody living here must obtain a fishing quota from someone living in Boksburg or Soweto. We must be fair to those reliant on these resources.”

Aucamp said the department has been required to act swiftly, decisively, responsibly, and in line with the precautionary principles as enshrined in the Marine Living Resource Act. 

“The small pelagic sector remains a pillar of coastal employment, food security, animal feed supply chains, and export earnings, particularly for the West Coast. It is also a sector that is inherently sensitive to environmental variability and climate-driven regime shifts. Recent scientific assessments have confirmed significant fluctuations in biomass and recruitment, most notably the record-low anchovy recruitment observed in 2025 and the persistently low, though cautiously improving, sardine population levels.

“The interim Total Allowable Catches (TAC) and associated by-catch limits for the 2026 season, which came into effect to ensure the timely opening of the fishing season, are firmly grounded in the best available science and in internationally accepted adaptive management approaches.

“They are deliberately conservative, transitional in nature, and will be reviewed once the results of the January–March 2026 pelagic biomass survey become available,” he said.

Aucamp added that the department is navigating a “complex administrative and legal environment as part of the long-term rights allocation process”.

“The department has concluded its internal appeals processes and, in the interests of procedural fairness, legal certainty, and institutional credibility, will be approaching the courts to enable a reconsideration process. This step is taken to ensure that the allocation framework is robust, defensible, and aligned with constitutional and administrative justice principles, and to restore long-term stability and investor confidence in the sector.”

chevon.booysen@inl.co.za

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