Tom Seaman, editorial director of Undercurrent News, brings you a roundup of the main stories from the previous week.
Chinese retailers have moved swiftly to remove products by Ecuador's Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila from sale after Chinese customs detected coronavirus in a shipping container with its frozen shrimp, Louis Harkell revealed.
Both JD.com, China's largest e-commerce platform, and Alibaba Group's B-2-C e-commerce platform Tmall, have pulled shrimp from Santa Priscila.
On Friday, Chinese customs authorities suspended the export licenses of Santa Priscila and two other processors, Empacreci and Empacadora Del Pacifico Sociedad Anonima Edpacif.
In a press conference in Beijing held on Friday afternoon, officials said coronavirus was detected on five boxes of shrimp that arrived in China on July 3. Three positive samples were taken from the outer packaging of boxes of shrimp from Empacreci, authorities said.
Samples taken from the outer packaging of two boxes of shrimp by Empacadora Del Pacifico Sociedad Anonima Edpacif also tested positive, authorities said. Coronavirus was also detected in a sample taken from the inside wall of a shipping container with shrimp packed by Santa Priscila, Ecuador's largest shrimp company, they said.
Even before this development, shrimp suppliers were in a tough spot. Addressing the industry from home on July 3, veteran Indian shrimp farmer Manoj Sharma urged his fellow countrymen to desist from panic harvesting as vannamei shrimp prices dip once again due to a claimed supply glut from Ecuador.
Sharma -- who is based in Gujarat, rather than India's shrimp farming heartlands of Andhra Pradesh -- said the previous few days had seen price decreasing across the global marketplace, creating "a very panicked situation in the industry, especially among the farmers".
"I think that the situation is happening because Ecuador is harvesting so much shrimp," Sharma, director of shrimp farming company Mayank Aquaculture, said. "What Chinese is offering is very much less, about $2.50- $3.00 for 40-50 count, and this is really a point of great worry to India also."
Even looking at trade data for April, the tough situation for the Indian sector is apparent. India's monthly shrimp exports dived by a third in April compared with the same month in 2019 as the pandemic hit demand in key markets, Louis Harkell reported.
The latest available trade data shows India exported $204 million worth of shrimp, 31% less than in the same month last year, and the lowest monthly value in April in four years. India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry provided no data for exports by volume.
With the Alaska salmon season in full flow, the chief financial officer (CFO) of fishermen-owned Silver Bay Seafoods, one of the largest processors in the US state of Alaska, has resigned.
Larsen Mettler will stay on with Silver Bay for two months while a successor is recruited during the salmon season, he said, adding: "We have a planned transition period, which will enable a smooth transition for the company and new CFO.”
Although he would not reveal where he's going, he said it's a role where his past seafood investment banking and operating skills will be combined.
In Europe, the former director-general of Spain’s Grupo Iberica de Congelados (Iberconsa) plans to double fresh specialist Grupo Scanfisk Seafood’s turnover in the next three years with a move into frozen, having joined as a minority shareholder alongside CEO and founder Angel Garcia Lahoz.
Imanol Almudi Martin, who left Iberconsa last October after the takeover by US private investor Platinum Equity earlier in the year, is busy building up a Vigo-based frozen arm for Scanfisk, with the first deal an exclusive sales agreement for frozen tuna with processor Atunlo.
Almudi has also added two former Iberconsa sales executives, Rodrigo Rodriguez Gutierrez de Salamanca and Pedro Fernandes, to the team in Vigo, he told me.
William Brandt, the New York bankruptcy court-appointed trustee working toward a sale of Peruvian fishmeal and fish oil producer China Fishery Group Peru Singapore (CFG), has a “champagne problem", he told Jason Smith.
Brandt has been trying to sell the $600m turnover company for almost four years and amid a mediation proceeding to resolve several issues holding up the sale. But in the meantime, CFG remains very profitable, he said.
“I’ve got a situation where I’m a bankruptcy trustee and on my bad days I’m running a company that makes $90m to $100m in EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] a year and on my good days they make $150m to $175m. We in the bankruptcy world call this a champagne problem," he said.
The same cannot be said for lobster fishers in the US state of Maine.
The lobster harvest has thus far been slow to ramp up in Maine this summer, fishermen and wholesalers told Jason Huffman. Despite workable weather conditions on the water -- sometimes windy, cool and a bit foggy -- the fishermen say they haven't seen big landings, and their peers have yet to show up in large numbers, too, as the prices are not too compelling.
They report fetching $2.50 to $3.00 per pound for softshells at the dock, roughly a dollar less per pound than usual for this time of year. Hardshells are drawing about $3.50/lb, they report.
As well as depressing seafood prices, the coronavirus pandemic has seen event organizers forced to cancel seafood trade shows and conferences. The latest to go was the 2020 Conxemar International Frozen Seafood Exhibition, scheduled for Oct. 6-8, 2020. Conxemar, the organizer, canceled the show on July 7.
The next day, Conxemar also canceled its planned debut Brussels seafood show in 2021. Conxemar Brussels was set to be held just over a week before Diversified's Global Seafood Expo is held for the first time in Barcelona, on April 27-29.
July 13, 2020 at 04:06PM
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Editor's recap: Chinese e-commerce giants pull Santa Priscila shrimp; Indian veteran urges farmers not to panic harvest - Undercurrent News
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