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Discharge
from Vessel
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Vessels leaving the peer of the Hout Bay harbour after offloading |
The lobster bins are offloaded from the boat and transported to the factory. Should they arrive from a remote area than they are transported in a refrigerated truck. This is to maintain a temperature of 7-12 degrees.
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Weighting
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The Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) officials are controlling the weight and monitoring the process.
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Transfer
to Tank
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The tanks are filled with seawater maintaining a temperature of 8 degrees Celsius. The total tank capacity can hold 15 tons divided into 27 units. One unit hold up to 300kg representing 800 – 1200 lobsters. The lobsters will remain in the tanks for 72 hours.
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Sorting
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The lobsters are than graded whereby they are sorted into various sizes, which ranges are:
180-220gr
220-300gr
300-400gr
400-500gr
500-600gr
600gr+
Generally they are all earmarked for export with the exception of those showing damages, e.g. missing leg, etc; resulting in 3-4% sold locally.
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Tanks
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To complete the purging process the lobsters have to be retained in the tanks for 3-5 days.
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Weighting
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Fresh lobsters are in for a weighting process before -> Packing.
For frozen, whole and tailed lobsters -> Drowning.
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Drowning
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The drowning in fresh, running water will take up to 30 minutes.
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Tailing
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After the drowning process is completed the lobster tail is removed from its body.
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Grading
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The next grading process sorts the tails into three different sizes.
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Curling
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Raw frozen lobsters
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The lobster are wrapped in plastic and kept together with a rubber band. This applies to the tailed and whole lobsters. |
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Packing
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Live lobsters are chilled for 15 minutes before they are packed. Packing applies according the grading results.
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Master
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The process of packing the product into cartons is called "Master". Live lobsters are packed in 10kg or 14kg styrofoam boxes, representing 20-62 units packed in wood wool with an ice pack per box, scaled for weight and labeled accordingly. A sample accompanies the export lobsters to be tested for quality purposes.
Frozen lobster are packed in 5kg boxes, representing +/- 60 tails or 20 whole lobsters per box.
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Holding Room
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Keeping the temperature of 7-10 degrees for fresh and -25 degrees celsius for raw frozen lobsters. |