Development of Turkish fish feed industry

According to Turkish aquaculture sector has showed a rapid development in recent years, the demand for fish feed in aquaculture has also increased considerably. The facts of increasing the number of aquaculture companies and production quantities together with the growing of demand for fish feed, promote the progress of aquaculture feed industry. Aquaculture production was recorded as approximately 60000 tons while fish feed production was 38000 tons in 1999 and the values for aquaculture production came to 240000 tons while fish feed production reached to 375000 tons in 2015. Fish feed production increased by 12 times while the quantity of aquaculture production was increasing by 4,5 times between the years of 1999 and 2016. In this study, the development of Turkish fish feed industry was evaluated. Today, there are 23 fish feed producing companies in Turkey. 70% of these enterprises make production 30000 tons and less than this amount. In this research, the companies that make production 30000 tons and less than this value were considered and telephone surveys were conducted with authorized persons who were in the management position of these enterprises. When the obtained data of the survey study results were evaluated, it was determined that the production quantity of 63% of the researched companies were between 10000 tons and 30000 tons. It was established that 56% of companies only produce fish feed. All responsibles of the enterprises, who were selected with in the scope this research, had the same opinion about believing that fish feed industry will continue its development. In the study, it is expected that aquaculture production will reach to 310268 tons and fish feed production will reach to 585418 tons in 2021 according to the production quantity forecasting made based on 18 years production values between the years of 1999 and 2016