Saving Seafood

Workers leaving Chinese fisheries due to low wages

July 13, 2020 — Fisheries remains a chronically low-wage industry in China, but there are signs of improved efficiency and productivity.

The average wage in the industry stood at CNY 21,108 (USD 2,955, EUR 2,744) in 2019, according to the National Fishery Economy Statistical Review, published recently by the Chinese Agriculture Ministry. That’s up six percent on the 2018 figure, but looks meager given what the ministry classifies as the “farm, fishery, and forestry” average annual wage at CNY 39,340 (USD 5,507, EUR 5,114) is only 43 percent of the average national wage.

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Interatlantic exec: China remains a processing powerhouse

September 4, 2019 — Economists have been predicting the decline of China’s seafood processing sector for years, but that prediction may not be correct, Jesús Martínez, Asia managing director at Interatlantic, a Vigo, Spain-based seafood trading firm, told SeafoodSource recently. Founded in 1989, Interatlantic has an office in Dalian, China, and has increasingly turned to China and its booming seafood market for a bigger share of its revenue.

Statistics do show a decline in the Chinese processing sector – the number of Chinese aquatic product processing enterprises dropped from 9,674 in 2017 to 9,336 in 2018, according to the Chinese Agriculture Ministry, and the country’s processing capacity of aquatic products processing enterprises fell from 29,262,300 tons per year in 2017 to 28,920,600 tons per year in 2018. Additionally, actual processing volume of aquatic products in China decreased by 1.79 percent compared with 2017, to 21.56,850 tons. Freshwater processing products and seawater processing totaled 3.883 million tons and 17.75 million tons respectively.

Read the full story at Seafood Source