Mark Godfrey is an Irish journalist covering the agriculture and fisheries sectors in Asia, with a focus on China. Proficient in Mandarin, he has frequently traveled across China's fisheries and aquaculture regions and learned the inner workings of China's corporate world during a nearly three-year stint at the Financial Times' “China Confidential” publication. He has also reported widely across Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. He has educational certificates in agriculture and food science, as well as Mandarin.
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A Chinese distant-water fishing company has made a HKD 5.8 million (USD 739,000, EUR 628,000) payment to preempt an upcoming court ruling on whether to wind the company up.
Fishing company China Ocean Group Development made the payment after an arbitration court in Hong Kong made a ruling last year in favor of a government-owned conglomerate that purchased bonds in the firm. The payment covers legal and other fees incurred in the arbitration
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Irish aquaculture companies are waiting up to six years to get their licenses renewed, mainly due to a shortage of ecologists conducting mandatory assessments.
Michael Mulloy, a member of the country’s Aquaculture Licenses Appeal Board (ALAB), recently told the Irish parliament’s freshly established fisheries committee that the 295 outstanding applications for either new licenses or renewals are severely delayed.
To alleviate
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Singaporean aquaculture firm Singapore Crawfish has opened a hatchery in Bhutan, completing the first phase of a large expansion project aimed at enhancing food security and reducing waste in the mountainous South Asian nation.
Desmond Chow, the CEO of Singapore Crawfish, told SeafoodSource that the firm’s new state-of-the-art Red Claw Crawfish Hatchery, situated in the Himalayan highlands, has started production.
“We are
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In a recently released financial report filed to the Singaporean stock exchange, restaurant operator Jumbo Group, which owns restaurants across Asia, including over 20 outlets of Jumbo Seafood, announced its revenue fell 10.6 percent year over year in the six months to the end of March 2025.
The company attributed the drop in the first half of its 2025 fiscal year to higher raw material prices, as well as consumer anxiety caused by global trade
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U.S. representatives at the World Trade Organization (WTO) have shifted their position in ongoing negotiations to end harmful fishery subsidies around the world, marking a change that is likely to further complicate the next batch of talks on the subject that are set to start on 14 July.
Some WTO delegates have proposed two tiers to target harmful fishery subsidies – a first tier targeting larger subsidizing nations and a second tier
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The Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification program, which is operated by the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA), has experienced a surge in applications from seafood firms supplying China’s domestic market.
New applicants targeting the Chinese domestic market accounted for just 3 percent of new applications in the country as recently as five years ago, but that figure now stands at 50 percent, according to Iris Xin Wang, who is the
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The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has opened a second office in China in order to better serve the nation’s large and diverse seafood industry.
The new office is located in Qianhai – a district within the city of Shenzhen, which has been seeking to develop a more robust tuna industry.
Qianhai Authority Director Xie Huihui said the new MSC office will “effectively promote the sustainable development of regional fisheries in
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The Canadian province of Nova Scotia is trying to secure alternative markets outside of China for its seafood exports in an attempt to protect producers from the ongoing trade war between the two nations.
“We know tariffs add further uncertainty for seafood exporters in Nova Scotia; however, it is too soon to know what those impacts are. To help our companies, we are ramping up our work to support expansion into new markets, reaching new
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China has revised its government spending regulations to limit expenditures on entertainment and travel, including on high-end government dinners.
The “Regulations on Strict Economy and Opposing Waste in Party and Government,” published jointly by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the nation’s State Council, state that high-end dishes, cigarettes, and alcohol should not be provided at work meals. Seafood
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