Irish oyster producers are suffering from low prices in a few key markets, as well as high input costs, according to Lee Hunter, the CEO of Oisirí Oileán Cróine Teoranta, which farms oysters in the western Irish county of Donegal.
“Anyone selling into the Asian market is taking a 10 to 20 percent price cut while still sending similar amounts,” Hunter said.
Hunter said that Irish oysters shipped to France – where Irish producers send oysters both for public consumption and for processing – are taking a similar cut in prices as consumers are cutting back amid a recent cost-of-living crisis in the country.
These prices have led to a buyers’ market in which customers are seeking higher-quality oysters for lower prices, Hunter said.
“The same volumes are being shifted, but customers are demanding higher quality for lower prices,” he said.
This drop in prices has also comes amid severe cost inflation for Irish oyster producers, Hunter said, with farms being hit by labor shortages that have challenged the country’s aquaculture sector.
“People are really struggling to get workers and to retain workers,” he said.
A byproduct of the inflation specific to Hunter is that it has slowed the rollout of technology he developed to monitor oyster health, he said. Hunter said he has been waiting for inflationary pressure to cool off before commercializing Oyster Pitch, an innovative method of tracking oyster health and reducing mortality by monitoring sound.
Though prices are down, demand for Irish shellfish appears to have recovered in China, which experienced a 55.6 percent jump in sales in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year.
Other species have experienced the same demand boom, including a “significant increase” in langoustine exports to China, “driven by an increase in demand at the foodservice level,” Ireland’s food exports promotion agency Bord Bia told SeafoodSource.
“Brown crab exports are also up due to increased shipping directly from Ireland – both live and frozen,” it said.
Overall, Irish seafood shipments to China were up 35.9 percent year over year in the period, according to Bord Bia.
