From December this year, imported frozen products have been repeatedly tested positive for COVID-19. This makes all parts of China once again increase the supervision of imported frozen products, putting huge pressure on imported frozen products merchants.
In recent days, Mr. Xu, an importer of Basafish in Wuhan, has been so anxious that he can’t sleep. Wuhan has set a very high level of supervision on imported frozen products, there is no place to store them, the products cannot be sold, and the costs of testing and disinfection are also very high. Mr Xu said, “We have 4 containers floating on the sea. I don’t know what to do after arriving at the port. According to the plan, the foreign processing plant originally had 10 containers to be shipped. Now We urgently asked the factory to stop loading.” A container of Basafish is worth about 300,000 rmb, and he suffered heavy losses as product sales were blocked.
More anxious than Mr. Xu is another importers Mr. Wang. He has 60 containers of imported aquatic products stranded in Tianjin Port, most of which are Indian ribbonfish, with a value of 600,000rmb per container. During the period of stay, the fees for nucleic acid testing, sterilization, electricity, etc. have reached 2.4 million rmb.
All frozen products need to be done nucleic acid testing and disinfection in the port city. This has resulted in a large amount of cargo being blocked at the port and cannot be shipped out.
The latest data from China Customs shows that China’s pork imports in October 2020 were 330,000 tons, a drop of 13.16% from the previous month, which was the lowest month of this year except January and February. Imports of poultry and beef also fell month-on-month in October. This situation is very abnormal. According to past experience, there should be more consumer demand at the end of the year, and the volume of imported meat in September, October, November and December should have increased.
The reasons for the decline are firstly the tightening of national controls and secondly that importers are not optimistic about the market.
In addition to facing strict national-level supervision, some local governments adopt the policy of cutting at one stroke in dealing with imported frozen products, directly prohibiting the sale of imported frozen products, this has created huge difficulties to importers.
All in all, the situation of China’s imported frozen products is very severe, with difficult entry, storage, and sales. The imported cold chain food industry has suffered an unprecedented crisis.
