Guayaquil, Ecuador-based ProExpo has announced its official entry into the U.S., expecting to sell 15 containers per month of its recently launched FreeBay brand of premium, antibiotic-free, head-on, shell-on frozen shrimp to the competitive Western market over the next year.
FreeBay International Key Account Manager Sharon Carpio told SeafoodSource that this move was partially due to the inconsistency of the Asian markets where the company typically sells its products – particularly China.
The Ecuadorian firm sells 25,000 metric tons (MT) annually of white vannamei shrimp worldwide, 60 percent of which goes to China, 25 percent to Europe, and the remaining 15 percent to a number of other destinations, Carpio said. In the past few years, though, the Chinese market has become “unpredictable."
Some Ecuadorian shrimp farmers have recognized an overdependence on the Asian market, after being hit by increased production prices coupled with a global supply glut of shrimp that has resulted in slack demand and lower prices paid to producers. China's bans on numerous Ecuadorian shrimp firms, including a one-week ban issued to ProExpo in August 2021, for alleged contamination of their products with strains of Covid-19 formented additional hesistation regarding the bilateral trading relationship.
“ProExpo has performed so well in other markets, including China, that we were admittedly slightly late to realize the market would decline. That said, ProExpo outperformed competitors in China during the Covid pandemic. We continued to sell without interruption to China [following the suspension] during that time when our competitors were not allowed to,” Carpio said. “In terms of the U.S., our expansion into the market has been both fast and strategic, with market research getting underway in the fall of 2022 and, now, in July, a product ready for purchase.”
Considering ProExpo was previously selling about five containers a year of shrimp to the U.S. – “next to nothing,” according to Carpio – the North American market represents a significant growth opportunity for the company, she said. As one of its first steps in its strategic plan, it hired food strategy consultancy Changing Tastes as an advisor.
“We checked out the supermarkets in the U.S., did a blind tasting in Florida, had meetings with big clients, and listened to what they need and what they are looking for, coming up with a checklist of the qualities FreeBay had to have in order to be considered premium in the U.S.,” Carpio said.
The process resulted in the positioning of FreeBay shrimp as the highest-quality, best-tasting head-on shrimp available in the U.S. market, with the goal of differentiating ProExpo’s offering and avoiding the pitfalls of price competition, Carpio said.
“We started this project last year to create a sustainable, premium brand, undertaking market research to see what is selling in the U.S. and what our premium brand should look like,” she said. “That’s how FreeBay was born.”
In June 2023, the first of ProExpo’s FreeBay product was made available in four-pound boxes to top-level restaurants and chefs. As a next step, ProExpo is expanding distribution to premium grocery stores and retailers, including H Mart.
“I’ve been in this business for 10 years, and I know in the U.S., the market competes on price. Shrimp is sold to a mass client, and quality is not much of an issue,” she said. “To set FreeBay apart, we want to assure our clients they are getting top quality [and that we are] taking care of all the processes [needed to be] sustainable, and enacting a strict, low-stress protocol with a biologist who supervises the whole harvest process to guarantee the best texture, taste, and flavor.”
ProExpo recently sponsored a product preview and sampling event in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. Some of the city’s leading chefs, including celebrity chef Susan Feniger, attended the event.
Arlin Wasserman, founder and managing director of Changing Tastes, told SeafoodSource that after Feniger tasted FreeBay, she was interested in switching to it at her restaurants – such as Border Grill, a restaurant that offers customers street-food-inspired Mexican food.
“In the U.S., about 40 percent of Americans want to swap from meat to seafood a couple times a week. Also, members of Gen Z and millennials want to eat fish and seafood in a restaurant, and they want something different than processed, value-added shrimp and farmed salmon fillets that are [already] popular. They’re looking for new, diverse flavors,” Wasserman said. “The head-on shrimp is a way to satisfy that appetite and differentiate with FreeBay’s offering. Head-on shrimp is a familiar offer, but it also looks new and different on the plate.”
Wasserman said a major hurdle keeping Americans from eating farmed seafood is the fear of antibiotic contamination, so the fact that FreeBay shrimp is antibiotic-free is a major selling point. The stress-free environment and high-quality processing – FreeBay shrimp are processed and packaged the same day they arrive at the plant to ensure freshness – may also be factors that extend the shelf-life of the product, Wasserman added.
“We did a comparison of FreeBay and 14 other brands of farmed white vannamei shrimp, and FreeBay did not develop melanosis nearly as fast as any other shrimp,” Wasserman said. “So, the chef can keep a box of shrimp in his walk-in freezer and use the amount of shrimp he needs from that box over several days.”
ProExpo’s next step with FreeBay is a planned launch in major cities across the U.S., targeting high-end restaurants where chefs favor serving head-on shrimp.
“We’re confident chefs in other major urban markets will then follow suit and lead a dramatic increase in head-on shrimp on menus around the country,” Carpio said.
The commercial push will run in tandem with an educational campaign, she said.
“We’re convinced these products will change how people will buy a product,” Carpio said. “We’re working on educating the public on why they should consume shrimp and why they should choose FreeBay.”
Photo courtesy of FreeBay
