China's seafood imports balloon by 44% to $12bn in 2018 (source ITC), while shrimp products occupy nearly 20%, as the country continues to change the face of global seafood trade. Now China is the biggest shrimp products consumption and the second biggest import country, and imported around 200,000 tons shrimp from India in 2018 and keep increasing.
As a traditional aquatic products consumption country, coastal citizens eat more seafood and prefer to eat live products in the past while inland consumed more freshwater fish like grass carp and snakehead fish. But thanks to the development of e-commerce and cold-fresh logistics, seafood availability rises up in inland places and consumption grows dramatically. In the meantime, food safety has been paid highly attention to, especially antibiotics and banned chemicals will be very strictly detected.
China government realized the fast up-raising seafood requirement, and started to support import policies to the major shrimp produce countries, like India and Ecuador. We have a strong believe that China will be one of the largest importers of Indian shrimp and fish (pangasius and tilapia, seabass, snakehead fish) in the near future. But considering Indian farming model, there are still some points we need to overcome to match China market requirement, like how to produce small size shrimp while not reduce the annual production, how to adjust shrimp body color and flavor through feed nutritional level, and how to maintain antibiotics free products by using functional feed to improve survival rate, how to solve yellow fish meat issues
In this presentation, the reporter will show China seafood consumption facts and the future trend, and also figure out the potential opportunities for Indian processors and exporters to China market.