NFI - The National Fisheries Institute based in Washington DC in the USA
SIPA - The Seafood Importers and Producers’ Alliance - based in Brussels, Belgium
APCI - The Indonesian Cold Storage Association
GAA - The Global Aquaculture Alliance
WAS - World Aquaculture Society
Mida Trade subscribes to numerous Seafood Publications in order to keep it abreast of current affairs in the Seafood Industry - among them - Seafood International, Intrafish International, Seafood Business, World Fishing. Mida Trade probably the best seafood library in the Philippines. Mida Trade’s senior staffs attend the Boston Seafood Show, the European Seafood Show, and the Global Shrimp Outlook meetings every year.

Mida has hired new staff over the last 12 months who will eventually be the new traders of the company. 6 of the new staff are from the Philippines - 1 Food Technologist, 4 Fisheries graduates, and 1 Boston college graduate with extensive international experience. We have hired 2 new staff in Jakarta - one for quality control and the other, a traffic/logistics expert. In Surabaya we hired 3 more - one Administrative Assistant , one Logistics Officer and one more for Quality Control. People are the key to our business and we spend good time and money training them locally and internationally so they can perform their functions well. Our new staffs come with an impressive portfolio, while our veteran staffs have been trained locally and internationally.
Our total count now is as follows:
Trading Staff: 9; Logistics Staff: 8; QC Staff: 9; Administration Staff: 11. This is the biggest headcount that Mida Trade has ever had but we believe we are investing in the future and that a trained staff will better be able to service our growing accounts now and in the next 5-10 years.
The next months of March to June will be spent with on the job training for many of the new staff, and International travel for training of the more senior executive staff. Mida Trade is proud of its training programs and efforts. The quality of the Mida staff will reflect this.

Mida Trade started its canned division in 2004 and is slowly but surely growing this business of brokering also for canned foods.

Mida Trade’s strength in sourcing continues to fuel the growth of its sister company Mida Food Distributors Inc in the Philippines, giving Mida Food the competitive edge it needs in the industry to dominate the supply of frozen seafood to Philippine restaurants, caterers and hotels. Mida Trade’s handling of the purchases of Mida Food gives it a good macro view of their customers in the USA or Europe and is valuable in training staff on how to service this kind of account. Mida Food also gives Mida Trade the stability and expertise that its customers look for in a supplier or representative office.

Mida has linked up with a company in Vietnam owned by a Filipino/Vietnamese who is of like mind in quality of service. We are now training a Vietnamese in our Manila office to assign to our Vietnam office in about 24 months. This is to service our sister company, Mida Food’s growing reliance on Vietnam as a source of some of its products, and also to access Vietnam’s rapidly growing seafood industry for Mida Trade’s clients in the USA and Europe. Already we have concluded trades with this Vietnam office for clients of Mida Trade and for Mida Food. Our Vietnam partner is also an ACC certifier which makes it a total of 6 certifiers in our portfolio.

Mida Trade was recently awarded exclusive distributorship in the Philippines for Tequisa - the leaders in seafood preservation technology in Spain. Some of their lines of products are revolutionary and understanding this technology will help Mida Trade in serving as advisors to processors in Indonesia and the Philippines. Mida Trade’s business is expected to grow as the aquaculture industry in the Philippines revives. Mida Trade is betting and banking on the Philippines once the vannamei shrimp is accepted and its advantages appreciated by the growers.

Mida Trade Managing director and major shareholder, Ms. Lourdes (Chingling) Tanco has for the last two years, led the Fisheries and Aquaculture Board in its pursuit of reforms and new innovations in the fisheries and aquaculture industry in the Philippines. Among its many pursuits is the lifting of the ban on the import of the vannamei brood stock to help the local aquaculture industry get an alternative animal to grow. This should revive this struggling, drowning aquaculture sector and take along with it the feed, processing and export industry. Mida’s indirect role in this will gain for the company the contacts needed to grow this industry in the Philippines and to gain recognition as a leader in the industry thus giving it the additional prestige with its principals abroad.

Six Mida Trade staff, including its Managing Director, have been certified by the Aquaculture Certification Council (ACC) through the ACC certification program. With this, Mida Trade is able to certify plants, ponds, hatcheries and feed companies who maintain Best Practices in their field of the industry. This certification is advantageous to plants as it qualifies them to supply major companies/end-users in the USA who now require that the suppliers (foreign processing plants) of their suppliers (the importers) be ACC certified. This is advantageous to Mida Trade because it keeps the company in tune with whoever gets certified when they do get certified so that we can source from them for our buyers. Additionally, Mida certifying staff is able to certify plants for ACC. This certification gives Mida Trade six out of a quota of 100 certifiers in the region.