A major fishing port in China is offering to subsidize the establishment of fishing and aquaculture bases by local firms operating abroad.
The municipal government of Xiamen, which is also a major processing hub, is also offering subsidies to firms transporting their distant-water catches home to be sold in the Xiamen International Seafood Trading Centre, a project built with government funds.
Under the new policy, local firms can claim 10 percent of the costs of building fishing and aquaculture facilities abroad, up to the end of 2023. The subsidy is detailed in a new document published jointly by the Municipal Finance Bureau and the Bureau of Ocean Development, both units of the city government.
The document, “Measures to Accelerate the Development of a Modern Fishery City,” also details supports for the build-out of local plants for “refined processing” of seafood. It pledges CNY 30 million (USD 4.2 million, EUR 3.6 million) of city funds to the further expansion of the city’s International Seafood Trading Centre, which distributes imported and domestically produced seafood.
Under the city’s new policy, Xiamen-based distant-water firms can not only land their catches tax-free, they’ll also be eligible to have the costs of bringing the catches back to Xiamen covered by city funds. The policy aims to widen the supply routes for local seafood processors and consumers.
Xiamen is home to several major seafood processors, like based Shenghai Food Holdings Company, Limited, which claims to be the country’s largest producer of dried seafood snacks. It is the producer of the“Wo Feng” (it also uses the “Wofan” name in Roman letters) brand of dried seafood snacks, and it also retails premium-quality gift packaged (dried) cuttlefish, oysters, scallops, and shrimp.
Anjoy Food Co. Ltd., another Xiamen-based firm market leader in the Chinese frozen seafood meals sector, grew its revenues from CNY 2.56 billion (USD 358 million, EUR 335 million) in 2014 to CNY 5.26 billion (USD 736 million, EUR 683 million) in 2019.
Photo courtesy of sleepingpanda/Shutterstock
