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
October 14, 2024
A report published in Marine Policy has found that the origin of nearly half of live tropical fish sold for human consumption in Hong Kong markets, the world’s largest market for the trade, is undocumented. Authored by a group of researchers at the Swire Institute of Marine Science at… Read More
Published on
October 9, 2024
Qingdao, China-based Meichu Foods has launched a new salmon snack, with the rollout providing further evidence of salmon’s staying power in the Chinese market. Meichu has rolled out the Salmon Cheese Roll and is one of several firms in the country that has focused on premium seafood imports,… Read More
Published on
October 8, 2024

Countries around the world implement tariffs and bans on foreign products primarily to protect the competitiveness of domestically made products, ensure products entering their borders are safe, and limit the number of products that enter their markets stemming from forced labor and other unsafe working conditions. However, these practices – justified or not – have hampered the growth of seafood industries in developing countries,

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Published on
October 7, 2024

Jiumaojiu International Holdings, which operates the quick-service Tai Er fish soup restaurant chain, is curtailing its plans for new openings.

Jiumaojiu lifted its revenue in the the first half of 2024 by 6.4 percent to more than CNY 3 billion (USD 428 million, EUR 389 million), but its profit dropped 71.5 percent as it cut prices to hold onto customers, according to its H1 2024 results. 

In response, the company is curtailing its plans

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Published on
October 4, 2024

The promoter of a large fishing and processing project in Nigeria has struggled to find investors to get the project up and running.

The backers of the Atlantico Fishing Port and Processing Zone want to tap the country’s “huge pelagic and demersal resources,” which are “untapped due to a lack of capacity of the local operators,” said Emeka Chukwu, CEO of the company seeking to develop the project.

“That

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Published on
October 2, 2024

In the run-up to the week-long National Day holiday commencing on 1 October, Chinese policymakers gave the country’s stock market its best week in a decade. 

Guolian Aquatic saw its share price jump by 15 percent on 30 September as China’s stock market roared back to life on the back of a government announcement of a planned economic stimulus package.

The shares of CNFC Overseas Fishery rose by 7.3 percent on the same

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Published on
October 2, 2024

Ireland has traditionally relied heavily on African markets for its pelagic exports, but the nation may be shifting its strategy in a search for markets that buy more premium products, especially as its quotas for the species have shrunk post-Brexit.

According to data released by the Clonakilty, Ireland-based Sea Fisheries Protection Authority (SFPA), outside of the E.U., Nigeria was the top buyer of Irish seafood by volume in 2023, buying over

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Published on
September 30, 2024

Aquaculture production in Hainan – one of China’s key tilapia-producing regions – has fallen drastically in the wake of a major typhoon that occurred in early September, with mass power outages on farms, causing huge mortality figures. 

Typhoon Yagi slammed into the coast of Hainan on 6 September with wind speeds reaching nearly 140 miles per hour, making it the most powerful storm to hit the region in a decade.

Josephine

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Published on
September 27, 2024

Demand for Irish shellfish appears to have recovered in China, with a 55.6 percent jump in the category in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

Overall, Irish seafood shipments to China were up 35.9 percent year on year in the period, according to Bord Bia, Ireland’s food exports promotion agency.

Data compiled by Bord Bia also shows Irish seafood exports to Asia rose 20.3 percent year on year in value terms in

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Published on
September 23, 2024
A union organizer in Ireland is raising alarm over claims that Irish fishing companies are hiring undocumented Indonesian workers to cut costs, resulting in poor pay for the undocumented workers and fewer opportunities for legal fishers looking for work. Michael O’Brien, a regional organizer… Read More