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
China’s distant-water fishing companies have been suffering from “high cost pressures and operating difficulties,” according to a new document published by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Due to these challenges, the ministry has recommended a wide-ranging support package to bolster the ailing sector.
Titled “Notice on Increasing Efforts to Help Distant-Water Fishing Enterprises,” the document
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Chinese aquaculture and feed mill representatives recently visited U.S. soybean farms and aquaculture facilities as part of a visit organized by the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) to establish mutually beneficial business connections.
The USSEC, which has long encouraged the Chinese aquaculture industry to use U.S.-grown soy in its operations, took the visiting group to four aquaculture facilities that employ recirculating aquaculture
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Hong Kong-based seafood importing and distribution firm Ocean One Holding recently reported disappointing financial results for the middle two quarters of 2024, underlining the continued decline of Hong Kong as a major center for imported seafood.
According to an official filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange, Ocean One reported that its revenue fell 16.5 percent to HKD 201 million (USD 25.8 million, EUR 25.1 million) for the six months
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Iranian government official Mohammed-Ali Javadi said China is ready to buy large volumes of Iranian seafood, following a recent delegation he led that consisted of Iranian seafood executives and officials visiting major Chinese seafood-processing firms Zhanjiang Guolian Aquatic Products and Guangdong Evergreen Corporation.
Javadi said that Chinese firms have invested in Middle Eastern and North African seafood operations before, and had seen
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Kylie Petherick is the CFO of Australian tuna-farming company Stehr Group, which has seen demand for its products soar in China recently.
Established in 1972, the family-owned Stehr Group specializes in the offshore ranching and grow-out of southern bluefin tuna from its base in Port Lincoln, South Australia.
In July, Stehr signed an agreement with seafood distributor Shanghai Xinjiangyang Supply Chain Management, making the latter the
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Venezuela’s Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture Juan Carlos Loyo has announced the South American nation has secured a trading protocol with China that will allow it to send wild-caught and farmed species to the top seafood import market in the world starting in 2025.
This follows protocol agreements that China recently signed with several African markets along the same lines.
“Venezuela will be one of only 15 countries with the
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The Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) has been making a concerted push this year to grow sales of Norwegian seafood in China, and according to the council’s latest data, that push has been paying off.
Through October, imports of Norwegian salmon into China reached 98,000 metric tons (MT) in round weight, a growth of 8.6 percent on the same period last year, according to Sigmund Bjorgo, the director of the NSC’s China
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The latest round of negotiations on ending harmful fishery subsidies have stalled at the World Trade Organization (WTO) after an intervention by India, which is again seeking major alterations to the draft text negotiators were hoping to finalize before the end of the year.
In response, Icelandic Ambassador to the WTO Einar Gunnarsson, who has been chairing the negotiations, said he will not bring the draft text to the table at this
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The Lavinia Corporation, an Athens, Greece-based shipping company, has teamed up with the Liaoyu Group, a Dalian, China-based fishing firm, to establish a joint venture aimed at building reefer vessels destined for use in the Antarctic krill fishery.
According to a statement issued by Lavinia, the new venture, which will trade under the name Fresh Cool Logistical Services and will be based in Dalian, has plans to order two reefer vessels
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A new report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has highlighted China’s weak efforts to revive fish stocks in its own waters, suggesting a need for China to implement more stringent controls on its fleet’s landings and collect better data to effectively measure the impacts of those controls.
Titled “Unselective, unsustainable, and unmonitored trawl fisheries?” the report states that efforts
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