On February 14, 99 Indian seafood exporters (since 2021, these exporters have been banned due to the new crown) were lifted by China, and the remaining 15 shrimp companies remained on the blacklist due to the white spot problem. In any case, Indian industry insiders expect the Chinese market to fully return to normal this year, bringing huge profits to exporters.
Elias Sait, secretary general of the Seafood Export Association of India (SEIA), told UCN: "In general, the epidemic problem in China has been resolved, and we are very optimistic about the opening of the Chinese market, which will create more opportunities for India."
"China mainly buys Headless Shrimp (HLSO) from India. This market is huge and the demand has always been there. For Ecuador, China has always been its largest market. During the epidemic, Ecuador's shrimp was forced to move to the United States and other countries. , they mainly produce head-on shrimp.”
"Thailand has also opened up and began to import Indian shrimp in limited quantities, but I don't want to export too much raw shrimp to countries like Thailand and Vietnam. They are good at value-added production. They consume very little domestically and mainly re-export. This business should stay. In India, it doesn't make sense to export to them," Sait said.
According to Willem Van der Pijl, founder of Shrimp Insights, China's shrimp imports will increase rapidly in the second half of 2022. The import volume in the third quarter hit a record high, and the annual import volume was close to 900,000 tons, an increase of 43% over 2021.
"China has absorbed a large amount of Ecuadorian shrimp, with imports increasing from 380,000 tons in 2021 to 560,000 tons, and Indian shrimp from 116,000 tons to 136,000 tons, while other shrimp-producing countries do not occupy much of the Chinese market." Van der Pijl said.
"In 2023, it will be difficult for Ecuadorian and Indian producers to resist such a familiar call of the market. Whether Ecuador will return to a simple transaction model, or continue to invest in value-added product processing, depends largely on China. Because in In this case, it is not easy for them to deliberately invest in changing the market structure," Van der Pijl said.