The lure of Asian carp: turning a pest into gold

The industrial park sits on 64 acres in Ballard County and is set up to make use of the carp acquired by the fish center. There are 12 tracts of land up for sale inside the park.

On opening day, eight tracts were already claimed, with only four left up for grabs. Most of the investors were from China.

Jiang Chenguang, an internet businessman from Guangxi, has set up United Fisheries Group to process carp into fish balls and fish cakes for export to China. Two Rivers Foods will process smoked fish — it has already shipped a smoker to the site.

Lakeside City is set up to process carp into salted fish. Investor Jiang Chuming will get into the net business. The existing Eco Fish hires fishermen to harvest carp, process fish and recycle fish waste into fertilizer.

Hotel and catering businessman Zhu Hongwei from Jiangsu province made the decision on opening day to buy one track for food processing. "I will decide to process fi sh into exactly what later," Zhu said. Investor An Fengjie bought a track and, like Zhu, has yet to decide what exactly to do in the carp bonanza.

Xu Hao runs a successful environmental business and specializes in recycling waste materials in Yunnan province. He registered Novaland Group in Kentucky to turn all the discarded fish parts into fertilizer for the US market. This helps to complete the fish processing chain and make the park waste free.

Novaland Group is Xu's first investment in the US. His estimated total investment is around $500,000. "We will solve the industrial park's garbage problem by eliminating the fish odor and recycling the fish waste into fertilizer to make the park a healthy and safe place," Xu said.

The industrial park is getting a warm welcome from local officials, many of whom attended the opening ceremony. Ballard County Judge Todd Cooper praised Yu for "taking lemons and making them into lemonade".

Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development Commissioner Erran Persley praised Yu's dedication in bringing a cluster of fish industries into the area.

"As we are negotiating at the federal level, the important thing is to make sure relationships between provinces and states keep moving and business relationships keep growing. This project is an excellent example of the fact that at the sub-nation level, we can come together and make business happen between our two nations," Persley said.

Kentucky's fisheries director Brooks has high hopes that the park's incentive program will help reduce the Asian carp population, and commercial fishermen should not worry about their prospects as far as Asian carp are concerned.

"As we fish them down, we will help the industry to go to the rivers. There are so many carp that we are not able to fish them all up in our lifetime," said Brooks.