One of China’s leading tuna-catching and -processing firms has been delisted from China’s board for growth enterprises after a hyped initial public offering in 2017.
Zhejiang Rong Zhou Hai Yang Products Co. is a subsidiary of a larger distant-water fishing firm, the Ping Tai Rong Group, based in Zhoushan, one of China’s busiest east coast ports. When it listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the firm promised to spend cash raised from its IPO on expanding the firm’s operations in international waters, with a focus on tuna.
Zhejiang Rong Zhou Hai Yang Products is the main tenant of the South China Tuna Trading Centre in Zhoushan, a space it shares with fellow member companies of the China Long-Distance Fishing Association.
Speaking at the IPO ceremony in Beijing in 2017, Ping Tai Rong Group General Manager Ni Jian Bo said the firm sells tuna in the European Union, United States, Japan, and South Korea, and that it aimed to expand sales in China. According to Ni, it processed 10,000 metric tons of tuna worth in 2018. The firm had the goal of increasing that figure by 20 percent in 2019 and said it had explored using tuna byproducts for health products.
“We are leading the charge for tuna in China. We have south China’s biggest cold storage,” Ni said at a ceremony celebrating the IPO.
Yet the company’s shares appear to have been pulled from the exchange this autumn.
Chinese tuna companies have complained in recent years of lower tuna prices, caused in part by a surge in the number of Chinese trawlers hitting the seas.
Ni was listed as the second-largest shareholder at the 2017 listing. He said the company is committed to corporate social responsibility, which he defined as "bringing safe, non-polluted tuna fish to the ordinary people of China."
Yu Xiong Wei, the chief engineer of Ping Tai Rong Ocean Fishery Co., regularly attends the annual People’s Congress of Zhejiang Province and has promised to use his position to “promote the long-distance fishing sector.”
Photo courtesy of China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance
