Setting Up of Cold Storage Facility at the Zamboanga Economic Zone Asian Halal Centre

The proposed Cold Storage facility will strengthen the vision of Zamboanga Peninsula region to become the Agri-Fisheries corridor of the Southern Philippines. Zamboanga City has a total of twelve (12) canning companies, 24 bottled sardines processors, 104 dried fish processors, 10 establishments in allied industries and 4 tin cans manufacturers. The Department of Agriculture – DILG Joint Administrative Order No. 1 Series of 2011 (JAO-01) was formulated to establish a conservation area where a closed fishing season for commercial-scale harvest of sardines was enforced for three months per year for a period of 3 years, starting December 2011. The imposed fishing ban of sardine (tamban) is a conservation initiative of the region to give spawning opportunity for the fish population in the area. To address the effect of the off-fishing season to the canning industries, the Cold Storage Facility will serve to accommodate extra catch during the open fishing season, or that canning factories can import frozen fish and store for processing during the off-season period so as to assure continuous operations.