Business

Saturday July 4, 2009

Stingrays for hobbyists

By ZAZALI MUSA


BATU PAHAT: Xian Leng Holdings Bhd will introduce new exotic ornamental fish species this year as part of its strategy to boost demand.

Managing director Ng Huan Tong said the species were the river stingrays that originated from Brazil which it had been breeding over the last two years.

He said the company would initially introduce two species – the white-spotted and the pearl stingrays – for hobbyists to see their response and create awareness.

“We want to give customers and hobbyists another choice of exotic fish species apart from our Asian arowana fishes now,” Ng told StarBiz after the company AGM.

He said the company hoped that customers would find the fresh water stingrays, which have a life span of 20 years, as interesting and unique as the Asian arowanas.

Ng said it would go for quantity for the stingrays as they were not highly priced unlike the arowanas.

He said demand for its arowanas had declined sharply especially from buyers in the Far East, particularly China and Japan, during the present economic slowdown.

Ng said although many businessmen from these two countries believed that keeping the fish would bring them good luck and prosperity, they were not willing to spend a huge sum of money to buy the fish now.

He said the company’s export market was badly hit and now accounted for 35% of total sales compared with 70% before the economic crisis.

“Apart from the economic downturn, competition also comes from other local arowana breeders and those in Indonesia and Singapore,” added Ng.

He said there were 200 arowana farmers in Malaysia now and most of them were smallholders that were able to offer lower prices to buyers as their operating cost was much lower.

For the financial year ended Jan 31, 2009, the company recorded RM15.17mil loss on RM19.47mil revenue against RM1.73mil profit and RM32.52mil revenue the previous year.

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