2010/774 Successful Sardines: Post-harvest optimisation and new product development for human consumption

By Karen McNaughton, Richard Musgrove and Stephen Pahl

The South Australian sardine fishery is Australia’s largest volume single species fishery. Sardines are an undervalued species in Australia and the industry recognised a need to increase the overall value of the fishery by utilising more sardines for human consumption purposes. In order to achieve this aim 10% of the total catch was targeted to be processed into value-added products for human consumption.

This project was designed to trial sardines from raw material factory receipt to finished products and would contain both pre-competitive research (shelf-life determination for sardine formats along with frozen shelf life extension to determine optimum quality and year round supply) and commercial-in-confidence product development (recipes, formulations, process controls, costs).

An indication of the expected chilled shelf life of bulk packed and modified atmosphere packed sardines resulted from research undertaken on current pack formats, which could assist the industry in optimising processing conditions to maximise product shelf life. It was found that the quality of frozen whole sardines was not affected by freezing rate when stored in a commercial holding freezer at -18°C for four months. This finding could assist in the storage of sardines for further processing to deliver year round supply of value added products.