Havana/The firefighters of Pinar del Río were finally able to put out this Saturday the fire that originated during the early hours of the morning at the La Coloma Industrial Fishing Company in Pinar del Río. The authorities still have no notion of At what level are the losses?but given that the company is the largest lobster processor in the country and that it had “state-of-the-art machines,” the amount is expected to be high.
The industry, which is the largest of its kind on the Island, was not functioning when the fire starteda fact that raises doubts about what could have caused the fire. The authorities, however, have limited themselves to explaining that there were no injuries or ammonia leaks that put firefighters and workers at risk.
“This is very sad,” he told Granma one of the company’s workers. According to the Communist Party newspaper, “although the damage has yet to be quantified, at first glance it is known that it is severe.”
The media added that the fire started in the area of the plant where lobsters are processed “and spread quickly through the enormous facility.”
The media added that the fire started in the area of the plant where lobsters are processed “and spread quickly through the enormous facility of an industry that contributes tens of millions of dollars to the Cuban economy.” After controlling the fire, the press confirmed that in a large part of the company the facilities were badly damaged: a “massage of zinc sheets, panels and charred steel beams from which columns of smoke still emerge.”
The director of the industry, Yordan Nogueira, especially regretted the loss of modern equipment in charge of “guaranteeing all processes with the quality standards demanded by exports.” In the pre-cooking area, he added, there were machines “unique in the country, including an automatic sorter and three baggers with their heat tunnels.”
The Vice Minister of the Food Industry, Miladys Naranjo, also spoke about the incident, recognizing that the fire will have a “very strong” impact on the fishing industry, especially on products for export. “Epicol is the main industry of its type in Cuba, since it processes more than 45% of the lobster that is caught on our island platform, for marketing in the markets of Asia and Europe,” he explained. Granma.
The workers and residents of the town of La Coloma will also be affected, since the company “represents the most important source of employment” in the community.
The workers and residents of the town of La Coloma will also be affected, since the company “represents the most important source of employment” in the community.
Naranjo, however, pointed out as alternatives to the fishing companies of Isla de la Juventud and Batabanó, “which at other times, in emergency situations, have received the lobster caught by the La Coloma boats.” This was the case, he added, when the Pinar del Río entity has been affected by hurricanes. “It is one of the strategies that has already been identified and that has been put into practice on other occasions. If the recovery is delayed and there is a manifestation of the species, it can be diverted to these two facilities and processed there,” he said.
However, the fishing sector is not experiencing its best moment in the country and the fire in La Coloma could increase the gap in production in recent years. In 2019, fishermen on Isla de la Juventud obtained an average of 19 kilograms of lobster per fishing gear, a figure that plummeted and, in 2024, barely reached 5.8 kilograms.
More recent data, from May of this year, certified the collapse of shrimp and lobster production by 84% and 45% less than six and five years earlier, respectively.
