The Melbourne Seafood Centre
It’s five o’clock in the morning. The streets are dark and quiet. But in a large white building in West Melbourne, there is the daily theatre of commerce that is the Melbourne Seafood Centre. This is Victoria’s central wholesale seafood hub where fish from all the fisheries around the state are bought together with fish from across the nation to be sold to retailers and distributors. It is a busy, raucous affair with hundreds of people loading bins of iced fish onto trolleys, people selling and buying fish, ice being shovelled over fish, and names being called out, all contributing to the Victorian economy.
“We move about 50 tonnes of seafood through the centre each day,” says Barbara Konstas, CEO of the Melbourne Seafood Centre. “There are about 200 people on the floor at any given time and more during busy times. Many of the people who work here are multigenerational.” There are 11 wholesale businesses on the floor, six of them multigenerational such as Clamms Seafoods, Regal Seafoods, Tim & Terry’s Oysters, ANZ Fisheries and Jack Miriklis Pty Ltd. Others have decades of experience in the industry.
One of the long-time traders is Andy McLaughlin. His family have been involved in the commercial fishing industry for over 60 years. He explains why, in this age of online sales, seafood sales are still done face to face. “Handling seafood is now so sophisticated that there is an expectation of a very, very high-quality product for human consumption,” he says. “While you can post a picture of a box of fish, there is no substitute yet for coming into the Centre and seeing the quality of the fish up close. The seafood industry is very discerning. They know what they want, and they want the best.” Andy says that 60%-70% of his trades are done face to face on the day, with some orders placed before the centre even opens, whilst some traders negotiate 100% of their sales on the floor each morning. A trader like Andy could have six people working the phones to scores of different commercial fishers. “This is a place built on trust and long-term relationships,” says Andy.
The people on the floor of the Melbourne Seafood Centre are from all across the globe. It is a veritable cultural melting pot. “My family came to Melbourne from Greece in the 1920s,” says Barbara. “Historically, Greeks are people of the sea, and we love seafood. We still do. We have a passion for high-quality seafood, which the Melbourne Seafood Centre has plenty of.” She says that passion for great seafood is shared with the other migrant families who work the floor. “The Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese and Chinese along with people from Sri Lanka and India, they all work together and share a common passion for high-quality seafood.”
The fish arrive overnight from fisheries around the state. There is southern rock lobster from Apollo Bay, Gummy shark from San Remo and snapper from Port Phillip Bay. From Lakes Entrance, there are boxes of sand whiting and from Corner Inlet, there are boxes of rock flathead, flounder and King George whiting. The fish are packed on ice in small boxes- the centre goes through 15 tonnes of ice every day! It is interesting to note that the Melbourne Seafood Centre is not about bulk fish. It is about the sale of small parcels of different species. A few boxes of flathead, a box of ling, some squid, leatherjackets, a few flounder could be packed in a box for a fishmonger.
By 7am, the place is almost quiet, with the fish on the way to the markets, fishmongers, restaurants and processors across Victoria for seafood consumers to enjoy. The centre is washed down, boxes washed and stacked and the paperwork finalised, all ready for the next day’s hive of activity.