Saving Seafood

SeaWeb Seafood Summit conference program puts focus on social and human rights challenges

April 26, 2019 — Representatives from Walmart, Anova Food, Thai Union, and North Atlantic/Bali Seafood International will be featured speakers at the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which will have a major focus on social and human rights challenges in seafood supply chains.

The summit, taking place 10 to 14 June in Bangkok, Thailand, will involve many of the leading voices in the seafood sustainability movement in Asia and globally. Companies taking part in the event will discuss ways they’ve created stronger relationships with supply chain partners and workers, reduced their exposure to risk, and produced a better product to sell through the adoption of sustainability measures in their respective businesses.

The conference’s keynote speaker will be Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice, an advocate of “impact sourcing” as a core strategy for both poverty alleviation and sustainable business. Rice is the author of “The Human Face of Sustainability: Empowering Fishers, Farmers, and Workers.” Rice will also serve on a panel with Richard Welford, the founder and chairman of CSR Asia, Walmart Senior Buying Manager Trevyr Lester, and Sarah Hogan, the program officer for the Packard Foundation’s Global Seafood Markets strategy, to discuss successful examples from seafood and other industries of sustainable supply chains. The panelists will share their experiences in using market forces to drive positive impacts on workers, communities, resources, and corporate profits, according to Diversified Communications, which operates the summit. (Editor’s note: Diversified Communications also operates SeafoodSource).

Another featured panel at the summit will investigate the economics of sustainable seafood in Asia, sustainability trends in other Asian markets, and how sustainable practices might come to be better recognized in Asian markets in the future. The panel will include Janice Lao, director of group corporate responsibility and sustainability at The Hongkong & Shanghai Hotels Limited; Rabobank’s Umesh Madhavan; Nobukazu Furuya with AEON TopValu Thailand; Wakao Hanaoka from Seafood Legacy; and Julie Qiu, the marketing director for Australis Aquaculture.

A separate plenary session will look into illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Asia, and will include Environmental Justice Foundation Co-Founder Steve Trent and Adisorn Promthep, the Director-General of Thaland’s Department of Fisheries. Trent and Promthep will discuss transparency initiatives and how they can be applied in the real-world, studying examples from Thailand and Indonesia.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US shrimp imports down for second straight month

April 18, 2019 — Shrimp imports into the United States fell again in February, with a drop of nearly 10 percent over the same month a year prior.

The U.S. brought in 42,871 metric tons (MT) of shrimp, 9.9 percent less than the 47,568 MT imported in February 2018. Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Thailand all saw significant decreases in the amount of shrimp they sent to the U.S. in February.

The major outlier to the trend continued to be India, which saw its total rise from 13,361 MT in February 2018 to 16,053 MT in February 2019, an increase of more than 20 percent. India also saw an increase in January 2019, and it was by far the largest importer of shrimp into the U.S. in 2018, becoming the first country to import 500 million pounds of shrimp in a calendar year.

The shrimp import figures were released on Wednesday, 17 April, by NOAA’s Office of Science and Technology.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New government rules threaten Vietnam’s tuna sector

March 7, 2019 — Tuna importers and exporters in Vietnam are complaining that their business operations have been severely impacted due to new requirements from the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, according to statements from Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

There are two circulars from the ministry that are now affecting both importers and exporters of tuna, VASEP said.

On 25 December, 2018, the ministry issued a revised circular, effective 10 February this year, which stated that consignments imported from ships at the oceans via transit ports in other countries must now submit a certification document or they will not be cleared. The document must include name of the ships, their registration numbers, their flag states, names and volumes of the catches, unloading time and location, and preservation conditions. The document, provided by authorities at the transit ports, must also certify that the catches are kept as at their original state and have not been under any processing phases.

VASEP, however, said most of the countries and territories through which VASEP members import their tuna refuse to provide such a document. Only Thailand and the Philippines had agreed to begin providing the certification, but even their documents do not contain all information required by Vietnamese authorities, VASEP said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

China opening up new seafood supply lines

February 26, 2019 –One of China’s largest and most inward cities, Lanzhou, is the latest to get an air cargo link to fly seafood from Southeast Asia. As China negotiates an end to trade tensions with the U.S. it has also been busily opening up new seafood trading routes and supply lines under its “One Belt, One Road” (also known as the New Silk Road) blueprint for opening up trade through new transport routes.

Not long ago, seafood imports into China were funnelled through just a handful of ports and airports, one of the reasons why smuggling such a popular route to get seafood into the country. Yet, recently, a 15-ton shipment of ribbonfish, grouper, and shrimp from Thailand was landed at Zhongzhou Airport, located in the desert outside Lanzhou – the latest in a series of inland ports and airports now allowed to handle seafood imports.

“With this new service seafood from Southeast Asia, we will now quickly reach local peoples’ tables,” a statement from the airport’s management proclaimed. Increasing the supply of imports of staple species like ribbonfish has also been central to China’s goals of keeping prices level.

Similarly, in the southern city of Nanning (capital of Guangxi Province), the Air Asia commercial service from Kuala Lumpur into Wu Wei Airport has become a supply line for both Indonesian grouper, Chilean salmon, and Canadian lobster, all transhipped through to Nanning, which last year was granted the right to handle customs for food imports.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

India is top exporter of shrimp to US for fourth straight year

February 1, 2019 — India is once again the top country of origin for shrimp entering the United States.

India outpaced Indonesia, Thailand, and Ecuador to take the title for most shrimp exports to the U.S. for the fourth straight year.

Thirty-two percent of all shrimp imported into the U.S. came from India, and India continues to build market share, as it realized a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.2 percent between 2014 and 2017, outpacing total U.S. shrimp demand CAGR growth of 7.1 percent, according to India’s Business Standard.

Shrimp exports to the U.S. were up 16 percent in 2018 over 2017 through November, despite lower prices due to a high supply volume, according to ShrimpTails magazine. The anomaly may be due to the expansion of the U.S. Seafood Import Monitoring Program to cover shrimp in 2019.

“As all markets that export shrimp to the U.S. will have to adhere to the requirements set out by SIMP, it seems inevitable that importers and their suppliers are trying to move as much product into the country as they can before it takes effect,” analysts Willem van der Pijl and Ken Salzinger wrote. “Especially for a country like India, which deals with tens of thousands of small-scale farmers, exporters are struggling to trace shrimp all the way back to the original farm, which is part of the requirements under SIMP.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Chicken of the Sea, Monterey Bay partnership yields first product offering

January 21, 2019 — Thai Union’s Chicken of the Sea Frozen Foods (COSFF) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have announced the first new product offering produced as part of the duo’s collaboration, which began last May.

The partnership’s SeaChange IGNITE program announced that it has upgraded the rating of Sri Lankan blue swimming crab to a “good alternative” recommendation. The species had previously been part of a fishery improvement project (FIP) aimed at improving the sustainability of the region’s fishing practices.

The SeaChange Ignite program was co-created by Chicken of the Sea and Monterey Bay to promote improvements throughout the supply chain as part of Thai Union’s sustainability initiative. There has been a commitment of $73 million towards the program, providing funding to 2025, with improvements in South-East Asia the primary focus.

Meanwhile, COSFF had initially joined the blue swimming crab FIP in July 2016, alongside its partner Taprobane Seafood Group. COSFF had, at the time, co-financed a harvest control strategy for the region’s crab fisheries.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

SFP: Farmed shrimp has significant sustainability concerns

December 14, 2018 — A new report released by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership on 12 December indicates that the world’s farmed shrimp production has lingering sustainability concerns with little improvement likely on the horizon.

The new report, which is a part of SFP’s “Target 75” initiative, classifies just 8.8 percent of the global production of farmed shrimp as “improving,” and none is classified as sustainable under the Target 75 standards. The major shrimp production regions that were assessed – China, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam – all have high chances of supply chain disruption and have significant sustainability concerns, according to SFP.

“The report highlights the need to work collaboratively across the supply chain to launch aquaculture improvement projects at the zonal scale and improve aquaculture governance,” Casey Marion of Beaver Street Fisheries said.

The biggest target for sustainability improvements, according to the report, are export-heavy markets that engage with countries more actively concerned about sustainability.

“This includes Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Together, these production regions account for 2.1 million metric tons, representing almost 42 percent of global production,” the report states.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Only way is up for pollock prices in 2019

November 20, 2018 — The prices for all forms of pollock look set to continue to increase next year, sources in the US, Russia, China and Europe told Undercurrent News.

Prices for pin-bone out (PBO) blocks, double-frozen fillet blocks, and the headed and gutted (H&G) raw material the latter is based on, all look set for higher levels in 2019, having already firmed in 2018, the sources said.

During the China Fisheries & Seafood Expo, held Nov. 7-9 in a venue close to Qingdao, ex-warehouse prices of around $3,500 per-metric-ton were being discussed for PBO blocks for A season. Prices for B season of 2018 were done around $3,350/t. Also, double frozen fillet block prices of around $3,200/t are also being discussed for next year.

“We see the price of $3,500/t reached and confirmed and we will take it up from there,” Fedor Kirsanov, CEO of Russian Fishery Company (RFC), told Undercurrent at the show, of the situation with PBO. US suppliers and also a large European buyer confirmed this level.

The level in the A season of 2018 was around $3,000/t (see image below and use the Undercurrent prices portal for interactive data), a leap from the very low level of around $2,350/t hit in the B season of 2017, as the price bottomed out. The pace of the increase has shocked buyers, but producers have been quick to point out this is only a return to a historical norm.

“We felt the fall was pretty quick. Now, it’s going more back to normal. It’s also not like pollock has gone off the charts. It’s back to a level where everyone can make money. It’s going back to a level where producers can make investments,” Tom Enlow, CEO of UniSea — a pollock, cod and crab processing plant in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, which is owned by Japan’s Nippon Suisan Kaisha (Nissui) — told Undercurrent.

The speed of the price increase has been driven by new markets taking the fish, he said.

“When the prices were very low, the producers looked at new markets. There has been more focus on deepskin for Asia and also surimi. Demand for surimi has been very strong, due to the shortfall in warmwater surimi,” the Nissui executive said. “The shortage in warmwater is the reason Thailand is so hot at the moment for surimi. Also, Japan is stable, but they take almost half of the surimi the US produces.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Is trade war pushing seafood processing out of China?

August 3, 2018 —The current Sino-U.S. trade war, which has seen tariffs imposed on most seafood products from China (but not on re-exported processed product), is causing many seafood processing companies in China to reassess whether or not to move their operations out of China. This is the first of a two-part series looking into the issue.

Many seafood processing companies are now assessing whether to move to another Asian location where wages and costs are lower. Even before the trade war heated up between the United States and China, it was a well-known fact that the cost of doing business in China has been rising steadily for years. Today, the average Chinese worker’s wages are twice those in Vietnam.

There are plenty of takers for anyone moving processing activity out of China, starting with what Asia-focused advisors have begun to refer to as the new “Big 5” of Asian manufacturing competiveness. As listed in the Deloitte 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index, the Big 5 are: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, and Vietnam.

All of those countries have committed to reforms that have improved their rankings, such as creating a national credit scoring system that allows for quick due-diligence checks on would-be local partners, and regulatory reforms that make it easier to wind up companies in those countries. Also, there’s been movement on better utilities connections in several ASEAN countries, including Indonesia. Vietnam has created a one-stop shop for business licenses and tax remittances while Malaysia has put much of the process online. And India and Thailand have worked hard to streamline their export and import licensing systems.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

World Tuna Conference: FAO providing powerful instruments to fight IUU fishing

June 5, 2018 — The 15th Infofish World Tuna Trade Conference and Exhibition opened on 28 May in Bangkok, Thailand. The three-day conference covered resources, fisheries management, markets, new technologies, food safety, sustainability, and environmental issues.

Among the sponsors was the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Jong-Jin Kim, FAO’s deputy regional representative for Asia and the Pacific, said during his opening address that the international community now has at its disposal a number of new and powerful instruments with the potential to drastically reduce and eliminate illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, including the FAO Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on Catch Documentation Schemes and the FAO Global Record of Fishing Vessels.

FAO Fishery Planning Analyst for Asia and the Pacific Cassandra De Young explained the various programs to SeafoodSource.

The 2009 FAO Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) is the first binding international agreement to specifically target IUU fishing. Its objective is to prevent, deter, and eliminate IUU fishing by preventing vessels engaged in IUU fishing from using ports and landing their catches. Entering into force in June 2016, 54 States and the European Union have joined forces by becoming Parties to the PSMA, as of May 2018.

FAO Voluntary Guidelines on Catch Documentation Schemes were officially adopted by the FAO Conference in July 2017 and, with seafood trade at record highs and consumer demand still rising, CDS are increasingly seen as an effective tool. For example, since 2010, the European Union has used a CDS that covers all fish shipments imported into the bloc from overseas; and in 2016, the United States announced its own scheme, the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP). In 2017, ASEAN adopted the voluntary ASEAN Catch Documentation Scheme for Marine Capture Fisheries to enhance intra-regional and international trade of fish and fish products.

Read the full story at Seafood Source