Introduction:
This study aimed to explore the marketing channel, marketing cost and marketing margin and problems associated with fish marketing in order to provide recommendations for efficient fish marketing system in Noakhali city, southern part of Bangladesh. Data were collected from Pouro bazar, sadar Noakhali.
Fish capture and transportation:
Normally fish are harvested from culture or open area in morning. Harveting is done with the help of some nets, craft and gears. After then fisherman or farmer keep the harvested fishes into drum, plastic or bamboo container. The container should be neat and clean. Van, rickshaw ,by-cycle or others vehicles are used to transport the fishes to market. When huge amount of fishes are harvested they used large vehicle such as truck, lorry etc. Sometimes auction also held on the bank of the pond, culture or open area.
Auction:
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder. The open ascending price auction is arguably the most common form of auction in use today. When fishes are bring into the market then keep into auction floor.After then fishes are separate into different groups according to size and species.Large, medium and small sized fishes are keep into different table. Same species are keep in same table Large and good quality fishes are sold in high price. On the other hand small sized fishes are sold in low price.Auctiion is controlled by a aratder or mohajon.Before the begining of the auction a minimum price in fixed for the selected fishes.This price spread over the bidders.A competition is create among the bidder to take selected fish.The fishes are sold to the person to the highest bidder & this price is selected.
Handling process:
Handling mainly occurred by washing process.immediately after catching or harvesting the catch should be washed thoroughly in order to free it from dirts and others extraneous matters.Washing removes most of the surface bacteria and dirts which otherwise can bring about early spoilage in fish.This process
Processing on fishing boat
Usually, the deep-sea fishing trawlers and mechanized fish boats are equipped with basic fish processing machines and cold-store facilities to manage the fishes on the spot. But the small-scale (non mechanized) fishing boat has no fish processing equipment, the caught fishes and shrimps are stored with ice, and then they are delivered to fish processing plants or distributors to have further processing.
Marketing cost:
The present study reveals that the price of fish increase owing to different marketing costs and benefit incurred by the middlemen at each stage of marketing. There are several types of marketing costs involved in the fish marketing of Noakhali city. The categories of these costs include transportation and handling cost, loading and unloading cost, container cost,cleanliness bill, electricity bill, ice/water cost, market toll, rent, wastage and others. The present study also exposed that the price of fish was not same at different stages in the marketing process and found to vary from producer to consumer by the involvement of various intermediaries.
Marketing channel:
Marketing channel plays major role in controlling the quality and price of the product. Usually the producers/fishers sold their catch through intermediaries especially when the consumer markets were in distant places from the production areas.
Preservation:
Generally fish are preserved by using ice in Noakhali city. The ice is available from local ice producing factory. Generally price of ice vary from season to season. Usually price are high during summer when the demand is high.The block ice are crushed into small pices and used for preservation.