January 18, 2019 — The glut in the global supply of shrimp that persisted throughout 2018 will remain in 2019, as cold storage facilities in the United States continue to have supplies lasting months in storage.
A panel of experts at the Global Seafood Market Conference in Coronado, California on 17 January said cold storage facilities in the U.S. had, at times, 30 percent more shrimp in storage in 2018 than they did in 2017.
In addition, the panel predicted that the reserves will not be drawn down significantly in 2019. The primary reason for that is production of shrimp in India, which panelists said will remain close to its record high of 740,000 metric tons (MT), with production in other countries starting to increase as well.
“It all comes back to, ‘What are we going to do with all this shrimp?’” said Jeff Goldberg, president of Fortune Imports.
Estimates indicate that there’s 290 million pounds of shrimp currently in cold storage facilities in the U.S., representing a supply that, with no further production or imports, could last more than three months.
That high amount of supply in storage is coupled with increasing supply coming from countries like Ecuador. Between 2013 and 2018, production of shrimp in Ecuador more than doubled, going from 219,412 MT to 471,026 MT.
Ecuador and India aren’t the only countries with increasing supply. Indonesia, Vietnam, and Mexico also saw growth. The most dramatic growth occurred in Guatemala, which has consistently increased between 30 to 40 percent year-over-year.