The city of Pingtan in southeastern Fujian province has announced plans to construct an advanced seafood products processing base.

As an island city located in the Taiwan Strait, aquaculture has always been a major industry in Pingtan, and the city is eyeing the bigger hauls of revenue to be made by processing its catches onsite.

Local seafood company Fujian Lanshun Food Processing Co has invested 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) in the project, which it plans to construct on a 26,000-square-meter site in Songnan village, Liushui town.

The first phase of the project will see the installation of advanced aquatic product processing equipment, which is expected to be put into use in the fourth quarter of 2017.

In the second phase, the company will construct some relevant research facilities in order to apply the latest cutting-edge technologies, including ultra-high temperature sterilization, quick-freeze and supercritical extraction, to its product processing.

Established in 2015, Fuzhou Lanshun Food Processing Co has built numerous aquaculture bases in Pingtan and other surrounding counties. Its products include abalones, crabs and shrimps, which it sells to clients in both China and abroad.

The new facility is expected to help the company reap further profits from its sales of frozen abalones in particular, which already account for 20 percent of its exports in value terms.

"In the past, in order to meet export standards for frozen abalones, we had to transport Pingtan's abalones to Xiamen or Zhangzhou for processing," said Yu Zhuying, president of Fuzhou Lanshun Food Processing Co.

"But now, after our own processing base is put into use, we shall be able to process all kinds of aquatic products independently," Yu added. "In the long run, it shall also exert a great positive effect on Pingtan's aquaculture industrial development."

A conceptual picture of the aquatic products processing base, which is currently under construction in Pingtan, Fujian province [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]