Santir Aquatic sets up shrimp naupli production centre in Andamans

Vizag-based Santir Aquatic Private Limited, which has a 300 million shrimp seeds a year production capacity at its two shrimp seed hatcheries in Andhra Pradesh, has set up a shrimp naupli production centre in the Andamans. Naupli or shrimp eggs is the main raw material used by shrimp hatcheries to produce shrimp seeds.

"High quality and disease-resistant naupli is available in the Andamans at lower prices and the survival rate of naupli is also higher by about 50 per cent. Keeping these advantages in mind we have set up a 200 million per month production capacity naupli production centre at Andamans and very recently we have begun trial production in this centre," M Sudarsan Swamy, managing director, Santir Aquatic, told Business Standard.

"We have invested around Rs 50 lakh to set up a naupli production plant at Andamans and we will lift the naupli production from Andamans to Andhra Pradesh by air. We can use some of the naupli production in our own hatcheries and surplus production can be sold to other hatchery owners in the state," Swamy said.

Shrimp hatchery owners at present purchase brooders (mother prawns) from local mechanised boat operators. Prices for brooders can touch anywhere between Rs 50,000 and Rs 70,000 per pair at Visakhapatnam fishing harbour.

Each mother prawn can hatch around 5 lakh naupli. Of late, because of pollution related reasons naupli production from brooders in Vizag has come down.

The Andamans enjoy a pollution free environment and high quality brooders are available at prices ranging between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 per pair with high naupli yields.

According to Swamy, the naupli from these brooders enjoyed a higher resistance to diseases and the seed production rates were also high.