During the peak summer fishing season, China’s local farmed shrimp production is poor, pushing up the price of local shrimp. However, due to the surge in imports from Ecuador and weak consumer demand, the price situation for imported shrimp is the reversed.
The head of the China Aquatic Products Alliance (CAPPMA) said, “This year (south China) shrimp farmers have not made any progress. The Changsan area, mainly Jiangsu, has not achieved good results in shrimp farming. Some shrimp farms have also closed.”
The average price of vannamei in Guangdong province in July was 56.75 yuan ($8.43/kg) per kilogram, up 38 percent from the same month in 2021. It was also the highest price recorded for the month since 2014.
In Hainan, farm prices for size 80 also rose 23 percent to a five-year high. After severe drought and heavy rains, weather conditions are expected to improve, but production is expected to decline anyway due to seasonal drawdowns in inventories.
This year, the south is relatively dry and less rainy, and the temperature has been high, which has had an impact on shrimp farming, however, the production in the north this year is much better, which may offset the impact of the decline in supply in the south, but there are still many variables, and the final production is difficult to estimate.
The low inventory in the market has led to an increase in the price of domestic farmed shrimp, on the contrary, imported shrimp are sold at a loss.
The main reason is the large amount of imported shrimp in the first half of the year, and the surge in supply led to oversupply in the market. The price of imported shrimp fell.
Some importers said that the current supply level is not in line with the current domestic consumption, and the current domestic economy is suffering from the impact of the downturn in the real estate market and the spread of COVID-19. The yuan weakened against the dollar, from 6.31 in February to 7.00. The result of this is that Chinese importers are currently losing money on every sale because foreign offers are currently higher than domestic sales prices.