Hay River (Apr 28/03) - The fish plant in Hay River is upgrading its product.

The Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation is set to make more value-added product at the plant.

Wallace Brown, the NWT zone manager with the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, displays frozen fish fillets at the corporation's Hay River plant. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Beginning in July, the plant will produce frozen, de-boned, vacuum-sealed fish fillets for export to Western Canada and the United States. Currently, it sells such fillets only on the local NWT market, while whole fresh fish is shipped outside the NWT.

"This is going to be a major advancement, a big step ahead," says Wallace Brown, the NWT zone manager with the corporation.

The fillets are in demand by restaurants and stores and the vacuum seal will ensure shelf life, he notes.

The change will mean more employment at the fish plant. The filleting unit will be expanded from two to six filleters. The unit also includes a support person.

"That will give us an extra four employees," Brown says, adding the work will be for nine to 10 months of the year and may eventually expand to a second filleting line.

The corporation will spend about $100,000 to make the change, which will involve moving the filleting unit downstairs in the plant, he adds. "We just don't have the room upstairs for expansion."

Currently, between 10-12 per cent of the plant's product is filleted and vacuum-sealed, and only for certain species. This change will see that percentage increase to 25-35 per cent -- between 120,000-175,000 kilograms of fish for each of Great Slave Lake's two fishing seasons. It will also mean all species will be filleted.

The filleted variety will be primarily whitefish, but will also include pickerel, trout, northern pike, inconnu, burbot and mullet.

Brown says the non-profit corporation has a mandate to buy and market fish and provide the best possible return to fishermen. The higher returns won't happen overnight, he adds, but he expects the fishermen will see the benefit in about three years once the markets are established.

"We feel the way fish is being marketed today that there is another market out there to tap into by producing a finished product," he says, adding the corporation is taking that approach across Canada.