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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China is currently negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Council – a political and economic alliance comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman – and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – a similar alliance comprising Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – to establish a three-way free trade agreement
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The Irish parliament has established a new committee focused on fisheries development, and the group has already called on the country to invest more in seafood processing while also cutting delays to its aquaculture licensing system.
“The [Irish] fishing sector has faced decades of neglect, mismanagement, underinvestment, and repeated policy failures that have held back – rather than supported – communities,” Committee
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Liancheng Ocean Fisheries Group, a Chinese tuna-fishing company based in the southeastern city of Shenzhen, has announced plans to build a new processing plant in an attempt to tap domestic demand for tuna.
Liancheng Ocean owns 72 longline fishing vessels, but also buys from 60 partner vessels, according to Dong Wenyan, the deputy general manager of the Liancheng Ocean Frozen Fleet. Wenyan further explained that the company sources tuna from the
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Fisheries inspectors in Spain recently agreed to a deal with the Spanish government to end a multi-month strike, ensuring that bluefin tuna fishers will benefit from their services in the upcoming high season.
Around 170 inspectors nationwide went on strike in early March seeking an increase in pay, among other demands, to reflect the long hours and hazardous environment required by their work.
"Inspectors are necessary when Spanish and other
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Even though the U.S. and China agreed to lower duties on each other’s goods for 90 days effective 14 May, Chinese tilapia producers and processors are pursuing several avenues in order to diversify their sales away from the U.S., trying to guard themselves against trade uncertainty.
One such path is to sell more to the domestic market, and the Chinese government has instituted initiatives to help companies hurt by tariff volatility do just
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Norway’s market share of the Chinese salmon market totaled 67 percent in April, marking the highest percentage in more than 10 years, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council’s (NSC) office in China.
NSC China Director Sigmund Bjorgo told SeafoodSource that Norway exported 25,600 metric tons (MT) of salmon to China over the first four months of 2024, marking an increase of 110 percent year over year. In April alone, Norway exported
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China has proposed a massive overhaul to its nationwide fisheries law, which, if passed, would align the nation’s fishing industry more with the goals outlined in the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA).
The PSMA aims to deter illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices across the globe; China ratified the agreement in April.
According to Liu Xinzhong, head of the fisheries bureau at the Chinese agriculture ministry,
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European and United Kingdom representatives met in London on 19 May to finalize a wide-ranging bilateral agreement covering such topics as security and defense, trade, and access to lucrative fishing grounds.
Prior to this post-Brexit “reset” agreement, Irish Fish Producers Organization (IFPO) CEO Aodh O’Donnell said his members wanted “a rebalancing of the disproportionate quota transfers that took place in 2020, where
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High raw material prices are forcing some Chinese squid processors to use as many parts of the cephalopod as possible in order to extract value and turn a profit.
Trevor Wang, sales manager at Shandong Xinrihai Food Co. told SeafoodSource at the 2025 Seafood Expo Global, which took place 6 to 8 May in Barcelona, Spain, that his company has recently developed an increasingly diverse range of products from cheaper parts of squid, such as the
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Three years after launching its first deep-sea aquaculture vessel, Chinese state-owned fish-farming firm Guoxin Development Group has launched an updated 150,000-metric-ton (MT) version.
The CNY 450 million (USD 63 million, EUR 54 million) Guoxin 1 2.1 vessel features upgrades to the 100,000 MT Guoxin 1 model including six more aquaculture compartments, a 16,000-cubic-meter increase to its water-holding capacity, and a solar photovoltaic system
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