Makassar, S Sulawesi (ANTARA Sulsel) - The Indonesian Association of Seaweed Companies (ARLI) asks for support from the South Sulawesi regional administration for its plan to build a number of seaweed processing plants.
"We are still awaiting support from the government for the plan to build four units of seaweed processing plant. We hope to build the facilities by phases in different locations in the province," ARLI chairman Safari Azis said here on Saturday.
South Sulawesi already has five seaweed processing plants but more units are needed to produce sufficient volume of processed seaweed for exports, Safari said.
He said each of the factories would have a production capacity of 500 tons per month or around 6,000 tons a year.
Additional production capacity from the four new units to be built would significantly increase export of processed seaweed from the province, he said.
Indonesia is one of the world`s largest producers of seaweed and South Sulawesi is among the biggest producing provinces.
South Sulawesi, however, is not yet sufficiently competitive in international market with limited capacity .
Logistics are also a problem , Safari said, citing, transport cost is much higher in the country compared to other countries such as China.
Foreign buyers choose to look for seaweed in other countries because of the high logistics in Indonesia, he said.
In addition, the government has banned export of unprocessed seaweed , he said.
"Exports of seaweed are still dominated by raw seaweed as production of processed seaweed is still limited on high production cost," he said.
Based on data at the provincial office of the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), seaweed exports from the province were valued at US$105.3 million in 2015 or 28.26 percent lower than US$146.9 million in 2014.
The export earning declined although exports rose 5 percent in volume from 12,449 tons in 2014 to 13,171 tons in 2015.