Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), the Seafood Development Agency in conjunction with Bord Bia’s Paris office are holding a crab innovation workshop today, Wednesday 30th November, in the School of Tourism (LYIT) in Killybegs.
Patrick Subreville an award winning French Chef giving a masterclass on crab recipes at the School of Tourism, based in LYIT’s Killybegs campus with participants on the Workshop. In front row: L to R: Michael Gallagher, BIM; Finnian O Luasa, European Seafood Manager Bord Bia; Donal Buckley, Business Development & Innovation Manager, BIM; Dr Sean Duffy, Head of School of Tourism, LYIT and Ciarán Ó hAnnracháin, Head of Department of Hospitality & Tourism.
The interactive workshop aims to inform Irish crab companies how to translate recipes into innovative value added products. Patrick Subreville an award winning French Chef will be on hand to prepare a number of exciting recipes using a variety of available crab products. The LYIT School of Tourism in Killybegs is the perfect venue for the workshop with its state of the art facilities and input from its up and coming chefs.
Currently, Irish brown crab is an important resource with an export value of €30 million in 2010. A high proportion of Irish crab are exported live but there is also a significant market for pasteurised products. The live market presents several challenges with oversupply of the traditional European markets leading to depressed prices in recent years, coupled with increasing costs of live logistics. Furthermore, the demographic of the live crab consumer in the important French market, is over 50 years old, which presents little opportunity for growth. On that basis, there is a clear need for innovation and new product development to produce attractive convenient products that will suit younger consumers.
Donal Buckley, BIM’s Business Development and Innovation Manager explains how this workshop signals the development of an innovation hub for the Northwest region; ‘This workshop is one of many projects in the pipeline to drive innovation and new product development in the Northwest. Through our partnership with LYIT, we are already well on our way to developing a seafood innovation hub for the region which was one of the recommendations set out in the Killybegs Jobs Initiative Report. Currently, 85% of Irish seafood is sold in commodity form and we need to develop new value added processed products to meet consumer demand and compete effectively on the global market. In 2010, Ireland exported over 3.5 tonnes of crab to France alone with a value of over €15 million. There is no doubt that there is great potential to grow our market share but in order to do we need to think outside the box and deliver innovative products. In essence, we are bringing innovation to the port of Killybegs’
Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), the Seafood Development Agency in conjunction with Bord Bia’s Paris office are holding a crab innovation workshop today, Wednesday 30th November, in the School of Tourism (LYIT) in Killybegs.