The company was founded in 1964 in Saldanha Bay, a small fishing village on South Africa's west coast. One year later Sea Harvest opened the doors of its fish processing plant which incorporated the country's biggest fully-automatic refrigeration installation. Adding value through vertical integration followed quickly.
In 1977 the Law of the Sea treaty put an end to uncontrolled fishing by foreign fishing fleets and in 1979 the first quotas were allocated in the deep-sea trawling industry. Sea Harvest received 38% of the total allowable catch.
Today, Sea Harvest processes fresh caught and frozen Cape hake into fillets, steaks, and loins and produces a wide range of coated, battered, crumbed, sauced, char-grilled and other value-added seafood products for retail and food-service markets around the world.
In 2008, Sea Harvest was purchased by a South African consortium led by the Cape-based empowerment company, Brimstone Investments and Kagiso. Sea Harvest's empowerment shareholding jumped to 77%, making it the biggest empowerment company in the South African fish industry.
In the same year the economies of the world crashed. "Fortunately fishing had improved, and with our international accreditations such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the Sea Harvest brand had huge credibility and was highly respected globally. We had to supersede the economic downturn through growth, through penetrating new markets in places like Australia, Northern Europe and the United States," says Sea Harvest's newly-appointed CEO, Felix Ratheb.
Felix appreciates the fact that the shareholders allow Sea Harvest's people to run their own business and that they share the company's vision.
"People are our most important asset," says Felix. Sea Harvest is the single largest employer in Saldanha Bay and the West Coast, responsible for between 4,000 and 5,000 direct and indirect careers. In the greater west coast area over 15% of all household income is derived from the company. When the town of Saldanha itself is considered, this figure jumps to nearly 30%.
In 2009, Sea Harvest, together with three other South African fishing companies, launched the Responsible Fishing Alliance (RFA) in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and recently Birdlife SA, advocating an ecosystems approach to marine resource management.
Sea Harvest was instrumental in developing an Effort Limitation Model to limit the catching capacity of rights holders and introducing the concept of 'ring-fencing'; whereby deep sea trawling only happens in a specially demarcated area. In addition, by-catch limits have been set and Tori lines have been introduced on all Sea Harvest vessels.
