Mark Godfrey

Contributing Editor

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.


Author Archive

Published on
November 21, 2022

Recent pricing data suggest that China’s demand for seafood remains weak.

Average seafood prices rose by 2.8 percent year-on-year in September, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. That’s the same rate as the increase in the overall consumer price index but well below the overall rise in food price inflation, at 8.8 percent, driven largely by a surge in pork and vegetable prices.

China’s CPI rose 2 percent

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Published on
November 21, 2022

Fuzhou, China-based distant-water fishing firm Pingtan Marine Enterprise is struggling to get the price of its share back up above the minimum of USD 1.00 (EUR 0.96) required to remain listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

Pingtan, which has been repeatedly sanctioned by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange for late publication of its results and inadequate reporting of corporate activity, now has until 24 April, 2023 to comply with Nasdaq's

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Published on
November 18, 2022

Xinjiang Tianyun Organic Agriculture Co. has purchased and imported over 1.6 million seedlings from Denmark for its operations in far western China.

The aquaculture and processing firm, based in Yili, China, near the border with Kazakhstan, made the announcement in a statement to Chinese media, but didn’t name the Danish firm supplying the seedlings. The company’s CEO, Zhang Yu Ru, told SeafoodSource in January 2021 the

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Published on
November 17, 2022

China’s seafood trade has expanded through Q3 2022, according to the latest data from Chinese customs authorities.

Chinese seafood exporters have been battered in recent months by weakness in demand from key Western markets, which are struggling with inflation. China’s overall exports to the U.S. fell 13 percent in October, the third consecutive month of declines, while its overall exports to the European Union dropped 9 percent

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Published on
November 17, 2022

The owner of a Chinese distant-water fishing company with operations in Mauritania has said he plans have his company expand into Indonesia and Oman.

During a press conference called to coincide with the recent congress of the Communist Party of China, Fuzhou Hong Dong Fishery Chairman Lan Pingyong told reporters he was following the lead set by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a foreign policy and developmental blueprint announced

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Published on
November 17, 2022

A large sea cucumber farm project in northern China has been further delayed due to complications resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The farm, being built in the Yingkou Free Trade Industrial Zone, is being built at an estimated cost of USD 25 million (EUR 22.6 million) by Singapore-based Lim Shrimp Organization.

Construction on the site was completed in 2021, but operations were stalled by a lack of follow-through by the

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Published on
November 14, 2022

An influx of manufacturing – prompted by companies seeking to diversify supply chains away from China – has made Vietnam the fastest-growing economy in the region.

French investment bank Natixis has projected economic growth of 7.5 percent in 2022 for Vietnam, which it described as “the economic rockstar of Asia in 2022, if not the world,” with accelerating growth “thanks to robust retail sales, exports,

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Published on
November 14, 2022
Irish seafood exports to China have fallen thus far in 2022. Between January and August 2022, Ireland’s seafood exports to China – a category that includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan – were valued at EUR 19 million (USD 18.6 million), an 8 percent year-over-year decline, according to data from Bord Bia, Ireland’s food marketing agency Bord Bia. Yet during the same period, Irish shellfish shipments to China rose by 11 percent to EUR 9.9… Read More
Published on
November 11, 2022

Structural economic issues and demographics will dampen future Chinese consumption and reduce the attractiveness of the country as a market and destination for investment, according to Patrick Artus, chief economist at Natixis, a French investment bank with a network of offices in Asia.

“Domestic demand will increase very little or even stagnate in China, owing to population ageing, rising household savings as a precaution against a

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Published on
November 9, 2022

Representatives of Ireland’s fishing industry are asking the Irish government to shape the country’s ambitious offshore wind energy plan around floating turbines, which they say will be less disruptive to fishing operations.

Six Irish fisheries representatives recently visited a floating offshore wind farm in Kincardine on the Scottish coast at the invitation of Simply Blue, a renewable energy firm.

One of the six, Irish Fish

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