Welcome

The Coromandel Marine Farmers’ Association represents the Mussel and Oyster farmers’ of the Hauraki Gulf, who are concentrated around Coromandel Peninsula and at Waiheke Island.

Coromandel Marine Farmers’ Association

Coromandel Marine Farming Means:

 

  • Fully sustainable production with low environmental impact
  • Healthy, delicious, available and reliable seafood products for many consumers
  • Employment, notably for Maori and also in more remote areas where other employment Opportunities are few and/or seasonal
  • Regional economic returns, including for Maori as significant investors in the industry
  • Exports and wealth creation, with most inputs sourced locally
  • Fishing at Mussel farms, enhancing catching opportunities
  • Ensuring shellfish harvests from growing waters are always clean (annual cost >$350,000), to meet our stringent industry agreed standards, to prevent microbiological and biotoxin contamination. This data is also important to the Ministry of Health for protecting the public interest in safe shellfish.

Marine Farming and the Environment

 

Production is fully sustainable. Ecological effects are either positive (artificial reef) or if adverse are no more than minor, small-scale and reversible. Other environmental (eg visual) effects of the Gulf’s well-sited shellfish farms are minor. Once established fish farms are seen as part of the landscape, like pastoral farming and its structures.

Some litter and floats are lost from farming and Industry has programs in place to both minimise that and to recover these and other shoreline litter. There are very considerable positive socio-economic effects, from jobs, income and excellent seafood, and from associated support businesses and other symbioses eg tourist charter fishing.

 

For the future, Industry needs:

 

  • Ongoing permission to utilise sheltered quality water so as to allow the considerable investments needed
  • To significantly improve the Sugarloaf wharf, in Coromandel Harbour

Locations

 

Our Coromandel Marine Farmers’ Association Incorporated (CoroMFA) has as membership every Mussel farm, and many of the Oyster farms, within the Hauraki Gulf. That is at; Coromandel, the Thames Coast, Waimangu Point, East Auckland, Waiheke Island. We work closely with the Mahurangi Harbour’s Oyster marine farmers who constitute the rest of the Aquaculture industry in the Hauraki Gulf.

Our members produce Greenshell Mussels and Pacific Oysters for export and for North Island markets.

Industry Production and Value

 

In 2017 the NZIER assessed the Economic impact of the aquaculture industry in the Thames Coromandel District of the Waikato Region. Highlights are that the industry adds to this District alone:

 

  • 350 direct jobs (as FTEs)
  • 7.2% if its GDP, (at $70 M)
  • 450 direct jobs in other regions
  • $73M in exports and $30+M in NZ retail sales
  • Nutricious, delicious sustainable seafood.

 

Annual Greenshell Mussel production is ~ 26,000T. The significant new areas of water now in development eg at Wilson Bay, will allow double the harvest in the coming decades, to 55,000 +tonne annual production of Greenshell mussels. There are also opportunities to invest in other forms of aquaculture development such as finfish farming.

Annual Oyster output from Coromandel/Waiheke is some 1M dozen ~ (800T). There is a large Oyster processing facility in Coromandel which receives Northland product for further finishing and processing, to complement local production. The estimated total sales value of Coromandel/Waiheke Oyster production is approximately $10 million.

 

The primary places for employment in Hauraki aquaculture (jobs in; farming, processing, packaging and transport) are; Coromandel, Whitianga, Tauranga and Auckland. Iwi/Maori businesses now own a significant proportion of the marine farms in Waikato.

Contact us:

Tom Hollings,
Executive Officer

For all enquiries, please contact us by email:
info@coromfa.co.nz

c/- Business One Limited
PO Box 28
Thames 3540