China’s troubled aquaculture and seafood group Zoneco has reported a loss of CNY 23.5 million (USD 3.31 million 2.9 million) for the first half of 2019 even though the firm returned a profit of CNY 14.6 million (USD 2.05 million, EUR 1.86 million) in the same period last year. The firm had flagged a loss of between CNY 20 million (USD 2.82 million, EUR 2.55 million) and CNY 25 million (USD 3.52 million, EUR 3.18 million).
The company recently announced the sale of land at a fiberglass shipbuilding firm and has over the past year disposed of several processing subsidiaries in order to raise funds to address losses which it says were caused by mass die offs in its aquaculture operations.
Investors had been betting that rising demand for seafood in China and government policy announcements would favor firms like Zoneco: Government in 2018 came up with a policy “China Ports Investment Program 2018-2025” which pledged investment to improve berthing and safety facilities at fishery ports.
Zoneco also secured a 319 percent increase in state subsidies last year – CNY 30.4 million (USD 4.4 million, EUR 3.87 million) of which was funding participating in various R&D programs according to company filings. Zoneco (which has vessels in domestic and distant waters) also got CNY 3.67 million (USD 530,000, EUR 468,059) for scrapping fishing vessels.
Image courtesy of Zoneco
