China's salmon-processing capacity and expertise was missed the last two years as the country shielded itself from the pandemic with its zero-Covid policy.
But with the ending of that policy in November 2022, U.S. seafood companies are set to resume their processing contracting in China.
OBI Seafoods International Sales Manager Ron Risher told the audience at the National Fisheries Institute Global Seafood Market Conference – held from 15 to 19 January in La Quinta, California, U.S.A. – that secondary processing capacity for many wild-caught salmon species was tough to find through the pandemic.
“China was the last one to come out of complete lockdown, which really did affect secondary processing,” Risher said. “Now with everything opening up just recently, as well as the total removal on requirements for frozen seafood – which became kind of a scapegoat over there for the cause of Covid – we are opening up the trade lanes to process there.”
Those trade lanes may be returning, but getting them back to normal isn’t as simple as flipping a switch, Risher said.
“With the total closures in China of many of the seafood plants, it’s going to take a while before those plants are able to get back up to speed again to become basically the double-frozen processing powerhouse that China, northern China specifically, had become,” Risher said.
According to Risher, companies have pushed to find alternative providers of value-added processing in other countries. There have also been attempts to reshore processing in the U.S. in the hope that lower shipping costs would offset increased labor costs.
“We’re also finding that a lot of these other countries, whether it’s Southeast Asia, South America, and even Europe have been impacted and not able to come up to the processing capacity that was in Northern China before,” Risher said. “They’re still continuing to search, still trying to find more automation and training.”
The lack of processing capability was most evident in the way that 2022's large Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run was processed.
“With a large increase in the sockeye salmon run, they tried to be efficient as possible to move through the fish as it’s coming off the fishing boats,” Risher said. “That did result in a lot more H&G being produced as opposed to fillets. The fillet production in Alaska was very similar to what it was in the year prior, when there was a lot less supply.”
Risher said there’s a lot of increased carryover of product due to the huge sockeye run, which will leave the H&G sockeye market depending on the U.S. market.
“Hopefully will get through that soon,” Risher said.
He said predicted shortages of farmed Atlantic salmon predicted could be a boon for wild sockeye sellers.
“We’re definitely looking forward to that,” Risher said. “We’re working very closely with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, they have been given the marching orders to really push sockeye and really get the word out there what a beautiful fish that is.”
Photo by Chris Chase/SeafoodSource
