In the Net with Hart and Barton

A Report for FIBS by Lee Hazell (LH) Friday, 14 February 2003

At the last EXCO, two proposals were put to the panel regarding Marine Farming and Port Development. Both of these were largely passed. Two people largely involved in putting all of the information together into quite a large paper are the Director of Fisheries, John Barton (JB) and Economic Advisor, Michael Hart (MH). I got them briefly into the studio to give me a brief run-down on the final papers.

JB: As people are aware, there are three papers on the review of the fisheries policy. These were to do with Marine Farming, Aquaculture, and development of the Port and expansion of Maritime Services. And the third paper is on main-stream Fisheries Policy and Licensing Issues. Two of the papers went to the January EXCO – that is the Marine Farming Paper and the Port Development paper. And, the final paper on Licensing Issues, Main-stream Fisheries Policy is scheduled to go perhaps in March to EXCO. The two I mentioned largely passed through EXCO. There are a few conditions on them as to what happens – time tables and that sort of thing – generally, the recommendations in the papers, which had been developed through a working group and through the Fisheries Committee, went through EXCO. So, now it is really a case of implementing the recommendations in terms of Marine Farming, Aquaculture and also implementing the paper on Port Development and Expansion of Maritime Industries.

LH: With the Port Development, there has to be a Port Authority.

JB: Certainly, one of the fundamental recommendations in the Maritime Service/Port Development paper was that a Port Authority should be created because, up until now, a lot of Port Issues have been dealt with by a number of agencies. Tourism have been interested in some facilities for Tourist Vessels. Fisheries Department rather inherited FIPASS when it moved from some green porta cabins in Gilbert House Car-park to the Grey containers on FIPASS. So, we inherited that port and there are other facilities around the harbour as well, which could be developed and used and invested in to some extent. And, I think, that a Port Authority would pull everything together. We’d focus more on commercial users as to what they require and be able to develop those facilities. I think it is also the case now that it would largely fall to the Port Authority and perhaps Michael here to develop the case for the construction of or expansion of a new port facility as well.

LH: How would you create the Authority itself?

MH: The Port Authority would have two aspects to it. It would have a Board of Directors and be set up as a trust or statutory corporation. There are a number of models. Directors would be both representative of Government and of the Maritime Industries, including the Tourism sector, the Fishing sector, the Stevedores and people like that would be represented on the Board. And, we would then have a commercial company set up that would then run the Port Facilities.

JB: I think there are various models around the world as well. There are some examples from Scotland and one or two other places where there are ports with similar sizes to the Falklands and deal with a similar range of activity. So, there are various ways of doing it. There are various pit-falls to try and be avoided. But that is something which we will have to look at during the implementation stage.

LH: How long do you think it will take until everything gets rolling in creating this Port Facility?

MH: The Port Authority, we hope will be up and running for July 2004, which will start the financial year, so the Port Authority will be created by then and then it’s really a case of developing the new facilities and expanding our current facilities as the economics and demand wants.

LH: So, eventually, if the development happens and everything goes where it is supposed to go, will FIPASS be ditched, then, basically?

MH: That very much depends on the commercial case. FIPASS could probably be used for a number of years until it finally rusts away and sinks to the bottom of the camber and comes a replacement for the Charles Cooper. Until then, it probably last for a long time. It really depends on what demand there is for facilities. It is limited for some things because you can’t get very big vessels alongside but for smaller fishing boats and things like that it could probably operate as a base for some time to come.

JB: I think there is still quite a lot of work to do on that sort of thing really because certainly there have been a few meetings on that last week on things to do with fishing companies and things to do with Marine Farming. A number of the commercial folk have said that in order to do certain things they would definitely like improved port facilities in whatever form. And, I think there are several options for delivering that. Obviously the report we had earlier on the options for building a whole new port provides what is essentially a pretty expensive solution, certainly,

if you implemented that over one or two years, or something of that nature. I think there are still things to be looked at in terms of if it’s a new build as to how it’s achieved. I think it’s better, rather than spending all that sort of money in a very short space of time that you might want to build something –sort of 50 to 100 metres over 10 years, or something like that so that you can start using it very quickly and you are not actually putting out all the money in one foul swoop.

And, also to construct it on that sort of time-scale but also have more money going around the local economy and that type of thing, will also be good arguments as to why you should probably build it in a very short period of time. There are probably some benefits in gradually expanding facilities. There are arguments over whether we should expand existing facilities and develop them a bit further.

There is still quite a lot to discuss on that but I think the bottom line is that everyone that depends on port facilities and those who are looking to the future do largely agree that we really do have to be investing in port facilities because whatever we do we are going to be wanting to export amounts. The fishery is certainly going to support the main part of the economy and better facilities for that are much needed. There’s a whole host of things there that are required.

A recent example is of a vessel laid up at FIPASS over the Christmas period and some of the benefits that brought to the economy in terms of what we spend. That sort of thing has been looked at. But to actually maintain vessels there, particularly at this time of the year, is extremely difficult. Just having one vessel there created a few problems. But there are quite a number of Falkland registered vessels which might want to lay up at times of the year or to undertake some degree of servicing here in the Falklands.

LH: Where do they normally lay up?

JB: Most of the vessels at the moment either go to Montevideo or, in fact, to Vigo. There are 26 vessels on the Falklands register at the moment. There are other vessels which might use services here if they are available. Some of them don’t need anything too technical. Even if they go into a place like Montevideo, they quite often fly in the engineers and do the work, sometimes at anchor and not necessarily alongside the docks. There are things that can be done here and when you see the sums of money that goes into the community from all sorts of things – the purchase of provisions and employment of people to do certain things – just having one ship laid up can put a lot of money into the economy. It’s really quite surprising.

LH: If we could move on to the Marine Farming in the Falklands, I know there was a workshop held last Friday. Mike, would you explain about how things went?

MH: The workshop was very successful. It was a follow-up from a workshop that was held 2.5 years ago now, when FIDC first kicked off the Aquaculture changes. And, this was the follow-up resulting on the review process. And, there’s really wide-spread support for the development of the Aquaculture in the Falklands. Everyone is excited about the opportunities and are asking how soon can it be done.

LH: I guess there are quite a few people interested in the idea?

MH: There are a lot of people interested in the idea.

LH: Did they express what sort of things they would be interested in – what sort of field?

MH: There are two areas in which people are interested. There is muscle farming, building on the experiences of Falklands Fresh who have been very successful at Darwin and Goose Green and moving on from there to making a broader-scale industry with a lot more muscle farming going on. And, there are those companies that are interested in getting involved in farming finfish. And, there are lots of exciting opportunities around the world with declining fish stocks in the North Sea and places like that – thank goodness, not in the Falklands – but there is a huge growth in expertise and the demand for farmed fish. And, the Falklands could, maybe in 10 years’ time – 15 years time, be a world leader in farmed Toothfish, for example.

There are companies that are saying if they start now, we will be leaders in the industry in 10 to 15 years’ time.

LH: One of the things like Salmon, has that ever caught on?

MH: As you know, there was a Salmon Farm a few years ago now at Fox Bay and it was successful in growing Salmon – perhaps not so successful as a full-scale commercial production facility. But there are a lot of people growing Salmon around the world and very successful companies are doing it. It’s very hard for late comers to the industry to muscle in there but apart from Salmon, there are things like Sea Trout. It would be wonderful if a few of us rose to it. There is a huge potential for things like Sea Trout. It’s worth a lot more than Salmon and it has just begun to take off in places like Scotland. And, we have a lot of opportunity with these new developments to get in there at the early stages and become world leaders in those areas of Aquaculture.

JB: I think one of the headlines on the Marine Farming/Aquaculture thing as well is that the legislation specifically for Aquaculture should be in place by the end of this year. So, the target for legislation is December 2003. Obviously there is a certain amount of Marine Farming done now at the moment on the small scale so it can happen within the current legislative framework. But I think there is a lot more specific Aquaculture and Marine Farming legislation which does need to come along.

People will groan at more legislation but there two aspects to it. One is that the legislation should be a lot more specific towards Aquaculture and Marine Farming so that enables Government to control development and tie together with the planning ordinance and that sort of thing and to have the safeguards that are necessary to regulate the industry. But more importantly, in some respects, it should set out for the industry how the whole process works, what rights they have, and if anyone is looking to make a significant investment, it gives them an element of protection in that they know how the game works. Hopefully it will be an attractive business for someone to get into. The thing is, with Aquaculture and Marine Farming, is to some extent, the people who are at the sharp end – it can happen on a range of scales – you can have quite small shellfish farms and large shellfish farms – but you do need a critical mass, or some volume of production to actually have a processing facility. People have talked of something like 7,000 tonnes of shellfish to make a processing facility work. Individual farms could be dealing with much smaller amounts. But certainly, when you get up to figures like that, investments in processing facilities – people want to know. Things like what rights they have and how long can they hold the site will show that their investment is going to be reasonably well protected. That is a positive benefit of some more legislation.

LH: Were there many worries?

MH: Yes. In terms of pushing the account through there was a major worry about Marine Farming and the impact on the environment and our unique wildlife. Beyond that, the impact on the perception that the world sees us as an eco-tourism, pristine destination. I think we are very lucky in the Falklands that Marine Farming has been going on for a number of years in places like Scotland, New Zealand and Tasmania. They have made mistakes in the past themselves. And, we can learn from those mistakes and make sure we don’t repeat them here. People were concerned about environmental issues but the impact of Marine Farming on the environment is on the top of our list of things to look at and make sure we don’t cause any problems here in the Falklands. There is a tremendous amount of work that has to be done with groups like Falkland Conservation, with the Environmental Planning Officer – to make sure the environmental impacts are in our control. We must make sure that Marine Farming here doesn’t harm the environment, or people’s perceptions of the Falklands environment.

JB: We do have huge areas here, which is one of the attractions. Some people are actually looking at Marine Farming. If you fly over Chile in one or two areas, you see that a lot of the space is taken up by Marine Farms. One of the benefits here is that we have large areas, which are, or can be available for this.

Certainly, at the moment anyway, the areas are so vast, there is no immediate need for any of this to conflict with wildlife aspects. The two can probably be separated for a very long time. If the interest in Marine Farming ultimately is such that people want to get closer to some area where wildlife is, that would be a consideration at that time. If we ever get to that stage then, at least, Marine Farming will have been a success. There are an awful lot of areas around where you could have a Marine Farm that would be well and truly out of site of any wildlife tourism or areas marked out for wildlife tourism. Both issues are fairly major developments. Potentially, we still have to see what the interest in Marine Farming is and in port development.

They are potentially very big issues and could do good things for the economy, particularly the Marine Farming thing is an issue which could ultimately get a lot more people involved in Camp and that sort of thing. It could be a Camp activity as much as anything. It depends where processing facilities are. That’s still something to be looked at. It can get a lot more economic activity going around Camp. We will have to see how that develops. There will be a lot of work in terms of legislation and environmental work and setting up procedures.

Whether there is huge interest early on, we will just have to see. The effort has to go into it and the thing is there, available for the industry if it decides to make use of it.

LH: The cost of setting up something like a Port Development – have the figures changed? Roughly, how much do you think it would cost to set up something like that, even if it is gradually?

JB: I think there is some feeling that you could do something in terms of Port Development not necessarily for the high figures that came out in that early report. Obviously it depends on the nature of the construction. But I think there are still things that need to be looked at there. One of the issues was whether we do something slightly more gradually with a style of build that is something that can be managed. There are a lot of resources that are Already in the Falklands rather than having to bring something in which turns out to be very expensive. And,

I think also that we need to look at exactly what sort of facilities do need to be provided. We need real solid concrete so we can swing a 40-foot or even a 20 foot container around on loading. The area you need for high loads might be rather small. In terms of vessels laying up for maintenance, they would like to have shore power and have water supplied. They don’t necessarily need to be alongside a solid concrete dock. They can use something like East Cove has where you’ve got a solid jetty head and then you’ve got walkways heading in one way. You can actually increase lay-up space without providing such a solid structure.

I have also seen port developments in one or two places for fairly large cruise vessels and the actual solid jetty head is fairly narrow compared to the length of the cruise vessel. But then you have a series of moorings going out forward and aft. There are a number of alternative solutions there that can be put in to provide what we want but hopefully reduces some of the costs. A lot of that would still have to be looked at.

If much of the development is left to the Port Authorities, perhaps they can do it on a more commercial basis, in terms of borrowing money and that sort of thing. There will have to be Government input in some way. It may be possible to arrange some alternative finance, which spreads the expenditure or pay back for a loan over a greater number of years.

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