A conversation about a lifetime in the fishing industry and the perspective from the hotseat of a large fishing corporation. Tim Reddell has spent more than four decades in South Africa’s fishing industry, rising from industrial engineer to managing director of Viking Fishing, a division now part of Sea Harvest. Viking operates trawlers, processing facilities, and aquaculture ventures, and has built its success on both hard-won quota acquisitions and the difficult realities of South African fisheries governance.
Reddell has also chaired the South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association (Sadstia) multiple times, giving him a front-row view of the struggles and politics that shape the sector. In conversation, he blends pragmatism with frustration. He is proud of South Africa’s world-class fisheries science, but critical of how government systems have decayed since the 1980s.
He believes the quota system, while imperfect, is the only thing stopping the tragedy of the commons. He is sceptical of how Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are imposed, and he has clear ideas on what he would ask the new Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Willie Aucamp. Above all, he insists that the future of fishing here will be defined less by expansion than by survival and value-adding.
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I trained as an industrial engineer at Stellenbosch. My first job was with I&J as an engineer, and over time I worked my way up to chief operating officer. After disagreements with shareholders, I left and started my own company – really a bundle of smaller operations: Hangberg Trawling Fishing, Quayside Fish Suppliers, Sentinel Seafoods and others.
Eventually I partnered with Nico Bacon, and together we consolidated those quotas into Viking Fishing. Every quota Viking has, we bought – never granted. That’s important, because it shows the scale of investment and risk involved.
If you look at hake, for example, the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) fluctuates. Every time it creeps above 150,000 tonnes, you know within a few years it will come down again. Then it stabilises and climbs back up.
That cycle has been consistent throughout my career. We’re not running out of fish – the science and the system keep us in check. The same with horse mackerel: we thought it had collapsed, but it turned out to be an availability issue, and the stock recovered.
It has to. Everyone – from the biggest companies to the smallest entrants – wants more fish. But the resource is finite.
If you allow open access, you’ll collapse the stocks. So yes, quotas are imperfect, but they’re the only thing preventing a tragedy of the commons. The real problem is in implementation.
The government handed out 15-year rights, with the idea that after three years there would be audits – checking whether the rights-holders had invested in boats, factories and jobs as they promised. That hasn’t happened. Instead, you get “paper quota holders” who sit on rights without deploying them, while genuine operators shoulder the costs.
I sympathise, but reality is reality. The little guys were granted quotas without having to pay for them. Many haven’t built the infrastructure to use them.
If you want to enter this industry today, you either need to buy an existing quota or form a joint venture. That’s what Viking has done for decades. You can’t just conjure new fish from the sea.
It’s a mess. If someone feels they didn’t get enough quota, they litigate. The government, fearful of court action, tries to broker compromises – usually by taking fish away from someone else.
That leads to constant appeals and uncertainty. What we need is a robust process with no mistakes, and a government with the courage to defend its decisions. Otherwise ,we’re in perpetual limbo.
Think about a house. You buy it, you get a title deed, you can sell it or use it as security for a loan. In South Africa, quotas are 15-year rights, not property.
That means you can’t use them as collateral. If I go to a bank wanting to buy a trawler worth R100-million, they ask: What happens if your rights aren’t renewed? They won’t lend.
In places like Australia, quotas are property rights – percentages of the Total Allowable Catch that can be bought, sold or mortgaged. That creates real security and liquidity. I would have converted our quotas at the last allocation: 50% granted outright, 25% via application, and 25% sold by government. Then you’d have a functioning market instead of political horse trading.
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