Strength in numbers

The co-op was incorporated 69 years ago with 211 members and today it has a turnover of 1.5 million tonnes of fish worth $15 million a year.

Today, the co-operative has 141 members with seafood and fish sourced from both the ocean and river, with some fisherman representing the fifth generation of their family to carry on the trade.

The co-op features a range of products, including the Yamba King Prawns, Clarence River School Prawns, octopus, mud crabs and whole fish.

Clarence River Fisherman's Co-operative general manager Danielle Adams, Maclean, said while the co-operative was officially formed in 1945, there was a representative group going back as far as the early 1900s.

"We are an estuary and an ocean co-operative; if the river isn't performing, then the ocean tends to be, and vice versa," she said.

"We are the largest seafood co-operative in NSW, and no other has the advantage of both the estuary and the ocean.

"The head office is based at Maclean, while our retail outlets are in Iluka and Yamba, and we weigh and deport at Maclean."

She said many members of the co-operative have been long-term fisherman.

"Thirty per cent of members make up the ocean fleet, and 70pc operate on the river.

"We have 141 registered shareholders or members," she said, the fishermen themselves having shares in the grower shareholder operation.

Garry Anderson, who is in charge of business development, said the business was a large co-operative, with the next largest co-op having about 60 members, and some other co-ops only having five to 10 members.

"While members are shareholders of the co-op, they are in their own right small businesses," Mr Anderson said.

"Other co-ops have closed down, and those closures are due to lack of members."

He said the future looked bright for the Clarence River Fisherman's Co-operative, although there were challenges that continued to be encountered.

Deregulation, which happened in 1999, has been one of those challenges.

It fragmented membership with many fishermen doing their own selling.

"They say deregulation is for the customers but at least when product is coming through the co-ops there is quality control from the boat to the table," Mr Anderson said.

Ms Adams also said there had been four floods in the past five years on the Clarence River, and the throughput of product had decreased because of these events.

"I estimate we were probably down by 25pc of our total product last financial year," she said.

Fishermen are housebound during the floods. When they can get out, they have to rescue their equipment - it can be another two weeks until the displaced product comes back into the estuary.

The flood period coincides with the peak period for the operation, which is usually two weeks after Christmas through to the end of May, which is also the peak period for processing frozen products such as octopus and ocean whiting.

"This week alone (and it's just Wednesday) we've gone through four tonnes of prawns," Mr Anderson said.

From now until May the co-op will process about 30,000kg of school prawns for the domestic market.

Ms Adams said one of their aims had been to value-add the co-op, and to be able to export new product was an exciting initiative.

The co-op's product is exported to countries such as China, Vietnam, New Zealand, Indonesia and Japan.

In Australia, Ms Adams said while NSW made up the largest percentage of sales, the co-op's stock was sold across the country.

"We have fresh product going directly into Victoria, up the east coast and into Queensland."

The co-op's biggest client is Woolworths, with seafood sold in stores from the Central Coast to the Sunshine Coast.

The co-op employs a staff of about 65 in total, but numbers depend on the time of the year and season, with most of those staff casual workers.