A difficult story for shrimp

The business market is always full of uncertainties, there is hardly a year without new difficulties. This becomes normal, difficulties are businessmen's companions. This year, the Vietnamese shrimp industry has had many difficulties. According to mental calculations, our shrimp industry has never encountered such great difficulties as now.

Photo: SEABINA GROUP

First, shrimp farming. Currently, shrimp farmers are facing difficulties because  shrimp diseases are very serious , mainly caused by widespread bacterial attacks. The stocked shrimp suffered losses within a month, but after holding out for a month and a half, the shrimp harvest was about 200 kg, only losses after losses.

The reason is that the seed supplier thinks their shrimp seed is good. Farmers say they have taken care of the farming environment extremely carefully. Authorities held a dialogue conference, the results were ignorant! Farmers lack capital, the farming season has arrived but the pond is bottomless. Investors are worried about risks so they are not aggressive yet, waiting to see how the situation develops. In general, after Tet is the start of the new shrimp season. This year, the fastest start will probably be a month late because it is almost the end of January.

Processing enterprises are holding back because  orders are not like they were in their heyday . Besides, at this time, although the price of commercial shrimp is not very high, it is still high compared to the selling price, because the  world shrimp price is too cheap , over 1 dollar cheaper than domestic shrimp per kg of commercial shrimp. Calculating the price of finished shrimp, the difference is over 1 and a half dollars, it is too difficult to find orders.

How big is the market? The Japanese yen lost a record value of 150 yen per USD. This situation makes purchasing power unable to be strong. The FOODEX fair in Japan taking place in early March will probably have many shrimp entrepreneurs attending, meeting customers and discussing strategies to retain consumers. The benefit is that the hard work and diligence of our workers has provided this market with products that are traditional to the Japanese, with good quality and beautiful designs, no other aquatic shrimp industry can keep up with. . This strength is being overlooked by the Indonesian shrimp industry, but we are confident in maintaining the leading shrimp market share here. The rest is a matter of price.

Right after the above mentioned FOODEX is the international seafood fair in Boston, USA. Our largest shrimp market is facing huge obstacles. In addition to their side requiring our shrimp businesses to  implement fair trade content for upcoming trade cooperation ; They are interested in increasing the frequency of declaration checks under SIMP; The outstanding difficulty is that the anti-subsidy lawsuit (CVD) is being preliminary investigated by the US Department of Commerce (DOC). Immediately after that, it is likely that the plaintiff will rekindle the anti-dumping (AD) lawsuit. Two or three stuffed sticky rice in one bowl.

In this situation, many shrimp and fish businessmen will come here from far away to listen to the situation; to meet customers to find ways to respond to potentially risky and complex challenges and to learn more about competitors; Because at this time, not only our shrimp but also the shrimp of the six countries with the largest shrimp production are entangled in the two lawsuits mentioned above. Who knows, maybe there is luck in misfortune; If rival countries' shrimp have higher tax rates, our shrimp industry still has opportunities to maintain market share and grow here. Maybe next quarter there will be preliminary results of this situation. At that time, the picture of market share division in the US market will be clearer.

Through April is the international seafood fair in Bacerlona, ​​Spain. This is one of the three largest seafood fairs in the world (along with Boston - USA, Qingdao - China). Our shrimp is facing difficulties here. Last year, consumption decreased a lot. The reason is that Ecuador's cheap shrimp dominates this market. They have the advantage of low prices, meeting the consumer trend here of ASC-certified shrimp, and lower transportation costs.

Consumer trends in the EU are ahead of other markets. They require farmed shrimp to meet safety standards (ASC), require suppliers to have solutions to reduce emissions (farming, processing), require full traceability (shrimp feed ingredients, shrimp broodstock... ), requires animal welfare (parent shrimp do not have their eyes cut off when artificially breeding, are raised at moderate density...). This strict requirement is one reason why the VN-EU highway already exists but our cars (processing enterprises) cannot speed up yet! Surely this situation makes our shrimp and fish entrepreneurs have to approach this market more thoroughly. At the next fair, our Vietnamese booth must be bigger and more majestic, attracting customers.

Normally, October is the Qingdao fair, China. Last year, China imported one million tons of shrimp, demonstrating the large capacity of this recent market. In fact, China has thousands of large enterprises processing shrimp to supply domestic consumption and export systems. They have the advantage that raw shrimp from many countries have excess supply to meet their needs, so China mainly imports raw shrimp for recycling and supply. The vast majority of our shrimp products are processed shrimp quite deeply; Therefore, we know that we know people and  focus on selling shrimp products to China that other shrimp supplying countries cannot meet.  During the transaction process over the past ten years, our shrimp businesses have had a lot of experience with this story. Since then, China has become a large potential market for our shrimp. Surely the Qingdao fair will be an ideal meeting place and in the long run, China will occupy a higher position in our shrimp market share.

Overall, at this time our shrimp industry is facing great difficulties. It is difficult from farming, processing to the consumer market. Of course, the people involved must take the initiative to shoulder the burden. If they don't expect it, it will be very unclear. Among them, farmers have the hardest time, lack of capital and excess uncertainty; I just hope the control of shrimp diseases from supplying facilities is better; I just hope the weather will be more favorable and I hope investors will step in and help farmers.

Shrimp entrepreneurs have to work hard and cannot wait for prosperity. Now we do business sustainably, pay more attention to risks, and no longer have the idea of ​​"beating the odds". Output determines input, the role of shrimp entrepreneurs is extremely large and decisive. Hundreds of thousands of shrimp farming households and tens of thousands of processing workers look forward to the results of industry entrepreneurs' trips abroad to find a way out of danger. Everything is still ahead. Although we have confidence in the bravery of our shrimp business team, the bigger concern is the situation of shrimp farming, which has not seen a clear light ahead even though the shrimp season is near.

Dr. Ho Quoc Luc - Former Chairman of VASEP, Chairman of the Board of Directors of FIMEX VN

Source: www.vasep.com.vn