China has started to enforce a new pollutant regulation for the seafood processing sector after a delay in earlier in the year due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The new rules could see a shake-out in the country’s highly price-competitive processing sector, which suffers from over capacity.
Seafood processing falls into the “HJ1109-2020” document, which was issued in March by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Currently, the document is being sent to local offices of the ministry for enforcement.
The cost of adhering to new rules on water and odor discharges laid out in the “HJ1109-2020” document will have to be shouldered by the processing companies themselves, putting many of them under financial pressure.
Enforcement is underway this month in Dinghai District, home to many large processors in the traditional processing hub of Zhoushan, located on China’s East Coast. Inspectors have visited 60 facilities, and are planning to announce more than 20 seafood processing companies as among the first batch of “pilot” plants meeting the new environmental standards.
When the new regulations were announced in 2016, China had 9,674 companies in seafood processing –only 2,636 of which had more than CNY 5 million (USD 715,434, EUR 627,196) in annual revenues, suggesting many firms are surviving on razor sharp margins. The figure fell to 9,323 in 2019, with 2,570 reporting above CNY 5 million (USD 715,434, EUR 627,196) in earning power, according to data collected by the Ministry of Commerce.
A weeding out of smaller, dirtier players has been tempered by worries at a local government level over employment. Hence, the attempts to create pilots and models.
National government in 2016 informed China’s processing sector it would enforce a sewage discharge licensing system beginning in 2020. Chinese seafood processing plants discharge 94 million tons per year, much of it untreated, into coastal waters, according to Wang Hai Yan, the head of standards for the Environment Enforcement Bureau at the Agriculture Ministry, which oversees fisheries. The bureau will also enforce standards on emissions from processing equipment, Wang said.
Several departmental shake-ups since 2016 have seen the pollution enforcement task land on the desks of two departments: the Agriculture Ministry and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, which was created in 2018.
China has in recent years been forced to curb chronic water pollution and to guarantee drinking water resources as aquifers dry up. National government has also set targets to rehabilitate wetlands, which had been reclaimed for aquaculture and development.
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