Aquamarine Seafood as a company is just six years old, but given its young age, it punches well above its weight in the global seafood industry.
That’s partially because, even though the company is new, its founder and owner, Bert Van Loock, has more than 30 years of industry experience, including 22 years at a trading company and five years as a director of a Belgium-based seafood processor and distributor. He said the experiences were valuable, but ultimately, he decided they were not for him.
“Pure trading companies are very, very price-driven. We would make all this effort to establish our network, audit factories, and work together with good suppliers, and then were frequently forced by our customers to buy from a big category of suppliers” he said. “That's not what I wanted to do.”
Van Loock said over his time in the seafood industry, he began to develop a theory of how he would run his own shop.
“You build up your experience, you see where your value is, where the opportunities are in the market,” Van Loock told SeafoodSource. “I did not want to depend on the decisions of others to make my buying decisions, and basically, I thought the business of trading was getting more and more demanding, with the customer side always requesting more and more in service: whether it was developing brands; creating packaging; or storage, which is basically like offering financing. And the margins were getting tighter. So my conclusion was to focus on very specialized products and to be the best in the market at those.”
In 2017, with a clear vision of how he wanted to operate, he founded the Antwerp, Belgium-headquartered Aquamarine.
“For me, it was very clear – we need to add value to the supply chain. We're not going to bother buying Norwegian salmon to sell it to local distributors because the industry has a representative in Belgium doing the sales. Where we feel that we add value is market knowledge, strict control of specifications and quality, and an offer that stands apart from the everyday products that everyone else has,” Van Loock said. “We have an assortment of niche, high-end products that are maybe not the biggest volumes but that give us our identity.”
Aquamarine Seafood had EUR 14.1 million (USD 14.8 million) in sales in 2022, up from EUR 10.5 million (USD 11.1 million) in 2021. It has grown from two employees to eight.
“We started from scratch, with new suppliers, new customers, and new products; building new brands and setting them up in the market,” Van Loock said. “We import products from all over the world, mostly under our own brands, and we also do private label. But basically, our core business is composing our own assortment of products with our own brands and selling it to the wholesale market and the industry.”
Aquamarine sources products globally, with Vietnam its largest source of product at around 35 percent. Van Loock said 95 percent of its sales are within Europe, with around 70 percent in the Netherlands and Belgium. Its primary customers are the industry and seafood wholesalers, serving the hotel, restaurant, and catering (HORECA) market, including many white tablecloth restaurants.“We have an assortment of very high-end products like carabineros shrimp; our crab items; and some very specialized items for sushi. This differentiates us from most other seafood companies, which are just focusing on the everyday assortment,” Van Loock said. “We also work a lot on demand. We have some very specialized wholesalers, and with them and their five-star restaurant and hotel clients, they sometimes have very specific, unique demands and we try to accommodate them in getting the product they're looking for.”
Van Loock said he now operates his company “the way I always wanted to.”
“I achieved what I was planning to do,” he said. “For these niche products, we have the network to get what clients want. We have the logistics and facilities to get the product to where the client wants it in fantastic shape. In the back of my head on every transaction, is what is the exchange I’m giving to people for every euro that I ask from them? I need to provide value in return, otherwise, it's just adding cost. That's what we want to avoid. We don't want to be a company that is adding cost but not adding value.”
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Aquamarine Seafood, Van Loock acknowledged. In its first year in business, 2017, the shrimp market crashed and the company was forced to sell at a loss for several months.
“That was not really a fun start,” he said.
The Covid-19 pandemic also hurt the firm. It suffered a down year in 2020 with EUR 6.8 million (USD 7.2 million) in sales, down from EUR 7.2 million (USD 7.6 million) in sales in 2019.
“We were lucky because we had inventory, and with the big shortages during the pandemic, we could make an extra buck because we had what everybody needed,” he said. “But we rely on our personal contacts in so many different countries for our business, and it became more difficult to maintain those relationships without being able to travel. We try to work as direct as possible, avoiding agents and exporters. We have digital communication channels, but face-to-face contact is essential. And that was not possible for a long period of time.”
Recent times have also provided challenges for Aquamarine.
“We saw the dollar rate change by 12 percent stronger against the euro. Freight rates rose so it was EUR 15,000 to EUR 17,000 [USD 16,000 to USD 18,000] for a container from China, which today is EUR 1,600 [USD 1,700]. The war in Ukraine and the energy crisis made everything more expensive and everything more insecure. The shrimp market has crashed. And wages have gone up here in Belgium by more than 11 percent. So the costs increased and then margins decreased,” Van Loock said. “This year, I think we will be rather stagnant. I don't see a lot of room for growth this year.”
Van Loock blamed high inventories for much of the current trouble facing the seafood industry as a whole.
“After the pandemic, with so much demand, and prices on the rise, a lot of initiative came from importers to buy, but now we all have built-up inventory and that inventory has turned out to be too much for the consumption. The large inventories gave exporters [and] producers the false impression that demand was falling, and while it did fall a little bit, for a producer in Bangladesh or India, it may feel like suddenly there is a big crash in demand, consumption is going on at relative normal levels. We just have a very, very big buffer in inventories. In the [U.S.] and Europe, there were cold storage facilities that were basically unable to accommodate more inventory because they were full. There is a lot of product that still needs to get out and get digested before there is enough room and confidence to build that stock up again.”
Van Loock called 2023 a shake-out year and said he’s not sure what 2024 will bring.
“Across the industry, it's a year where companies are having to rethink their processes and their focus,” he said. “[And for 2024], wholesalers, importers or producers, no one knows what will happen. It's not really clear where the market is headed.”
For Aquamarine, the future is dependent on nothing more than continuing to do the hard work of providing excellent service, quality control, and connecting hard-to-find products with those seeking them out, according to Van Loock.
“In house, we have seven languages that we can speak, so we are also able to provide a service in the client's own language. Since last year, we are working together with an agent in Italy who is developing the Italian market. Spain is of course a big, big market for us. And we are making progresses in retail but we are rather small in that segment,” he said. “My plan to develop the company in the years to come would be to basically double our current size in terms of turnover. Where we can still develop is the retail segment and countries outside the Benelux.”
On sourcing, Aquamarine is always trying to find new products its clients might be interested in, and then making sure that chain of supply is locked down and made to standard, Van Loock said.
“I travel a lot to the countries of origin. In Vietnam, we have our own representative, so when a new production line starts, he will be there in the factory to guide them toward our standards. We have representatives in other countries as well. And we are IFS-certified, so every year we also have to do a supplier survey and we give them scores depending on different aspects of production, consistency, price quality, nonconformities, quality control, and communication,” he said. “A lot depends on how you communicate with your supplier so they can understand exactly what you want and what you expect. For us, forming relationships is the basis of our business and what allows us to provide continuity. It’s about meeting people and the gut feeling when you talk to them. Are they talking in a straight way? Are they looking you in the eyes if you place an order? Do they really make it happen the way they promised? So direct contact, good contact, and transparent communication are key. And then, of course, there’s always stress during the first order – that's always a risk.”
Van Loock acknowledges that with Aquamarine’s current size, that risk is magnified in its potential impact to the company. But he said that’s the way he prefers to do business.
“We take all the decisions in house. We don't have shareholders to whom we have to send weekly reports about our results. We don't have investors that are looking at profit all the time. We are just self-supporting. We have our own credit lines. We do what we think is right. So that gives us a lot of flexibility. We make decisions quickly,” he said. “While we are new and still small, we have a very clear business concept and we are flexible.”
Despite all the difficulties Aquamarine has faced and continues to face, van Loock said his outlook for the company is bright. That’s because he feels like he has put the right pieces in place to survive nearly any challenge.
“The human factor is important to us, not only in our interactions with suppliers and customers, but also with and between our staff. I think we have a fantastic team and that's the most difficult part of setting up any business – finding people that you have a good feeling with and who have the necessary experience and loyalty to the company. That is the strongest asset of Aquamarine,” he said. “And for myself, I focus on the personal touch. I'm reachable by basically anyone and I have an ability to work in a very personalized way finding the right products for our clients. We want to do business, we want to pay our bills, we want to pay our staff, and I want to provide them a good working environment. My focus is on the long term, making sure we have a reputation that will get us through good times and bad.”
Photo courtesy of Aquamarine Seafood
