Our History

SFBBFE

The above abbreviation stands for San Francisco Bay Brand (Far East), Ltd. or 天津圣弗郎海湾饲料有限公司 as it is known in Mandarin, a company officially established in the Tianjin Technological & Economic Development Zone (TEDA), just to the north of the district of Tanggu in the People’s Republic of China on June 11th, 2001. TEDA is a ‘special economic zone’ opened by the late Deng Xiaoping on December 6th, 1984 and is located at the rim of the Bohai Bay, one of 3 bays in the Bohai Sea, which in part is a gulf of the Yellow Sea as can be seen in the map above. The main aim of a ‘special economic zone’ was to attract foreign companies by providing preferential investment and tax policies in order to speed up the economic development of this -at the time- economically underdeveloped area. SFBBFE was registered as a ‘Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise’, enabling its Californian investor (San Francisco Bay Brand, Inc. or SFBB) to exert full managerial & operational control over its Chinese subsidiary as there was no need for a mainland China based investor.

WHY GO THROUGH THIS TROUBLE?

Setting up a WFOE was not easy at the time as it required the allocation of a rather copious amount of time, energy and capital. So why did SFBB pursue this matter? One of the most compelling reasons was the decision taken by the United States Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to restore over 15,000 acres of previously commercial salt evaporation ponds in the San Francisco Bay back into tidal wetlands (marshes) through the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. Many of those salt evaporation ponds were the primary source of SFBB’s live and frozen brine shrimp products at the time, but access to the ponds for commercial brine shrimp harvesting would be forbidden once the restoration project would start. As such there would come an end to nearly 7 decades of brine shrimp harvesting from these ponds and SFBB had to go look for alternative brine shrimp resources.

CHOOSING A LOCATION

Brine shrimp are adapted to living in moderate saline environments like salterns and saline lakes. A saltern is a system of interconnected ponds through which seawater is pumped and in which each successive pond has a higher salinity as the water continuously evaporates. As most, but not all, moderate saline bodies of water are to be found in arid and semi-arid climates, it is in these climates that large amounts of naturally occurring brine shrimp populations can be found. SFBB had to look for naturally occurring brine shrimp as commercial rearing of brine shrimp could not, and still cannot, produce the required amount of brine shrimp in an economically feasible way. Such arid areas, as classified by the Köppen-Gieger climate classification (see here, hot semi-arid areas in orange & cold semi-arid areas in yellow) do not comprise a large amount of places or countries and more factors to consider were at play, limiting the amount of acceptable locations even further. Socio-political stability was important to safeguard the investment of course, but so was the level of development, the availability of a local labor force, the presence of acceptable utility amenities & communication lines, the proximity of harbor facilities, acceptable living conditions, etc.

THE BOHAI BAY IN CHINA

This location was chosen for multiple reasons. The Bohai Bay contains the largest amount of salterns in China, with some salterns having been in operation for over a millennium. As a result a huge standing crop of yearly reoccurring brine shrimp was, and still is, present in these salterns. These brine shrimp have been harvested since the mid-50’ties of last century for feeding larvae of various crab, shrimp and fish species (all reared in adjacent brackish water ponds) for human consumption. However, due to climatic conditions brine shrimp can only be harvested from the middle of April till late October, so what would we do during the cold months?

SFBB had been importing frozen midge larvae, better known as ‘bloodworms’, from this area since the early 90’ties. But as quality was unstable and the supplier unwilling to invest in upgrading their facility and processing techniques, SFBB saw an opportunity to kill 2 birds with one stone by processing both brine shrimp and bloodworms in the facility to be erected.

TEDA

As aforementioned TEDA was established to attract foreign companies and as such the area contained both undeveloped and developed plots of land having access points to the municipal tap water system, to a stable power supply (24 h access to electricity was really not a given towards the end of last century in northern China), a sewer and sewer treatment system, waste collection services and a local government eager and willing to help foreign businesses establish themselves.

Another advantage of TEDA was its location, namely in between the Hangu salterns just to the north and the Tanggu salterns just to the south, enabling us to quickly transport harvested brine shrimp to our facility for further processing.

The presence of nearby Xingang harbor, also known as the ‘Port of Tianjin’, formed another factor in deciding to establish a facility in TEDA. The harbor is the largest manmade harbor in northern China and forms TEDA’s eastern border. SFBBFE is located 500 m from one of the main roads towards the harbor and only 8 km proper of the harbor entrance, enabling it to quickly and smoothly move its refrigerated container units (reefers) to the TEDA Customs Bonded Warehouse Zone for potential inspections when exporting its finished goods.