Sea cucumber prices are up despite the COVID-19 crisis, in part due to shrinking local supply, according to Lim Shrimp Organization CEO and chief aquaculture officer Djames Lim.
Prices have risen due to a shortage of stocks as a result of government moves against pollution related to aquaculture, and also due to climate change, Lim told SeafoodSource.
Lim Shrimp Organization is currently building a large indoor sea cucumber farm in Yingkou, in northern China, but the coronavirus pandemic has forced a hold on construction. Lim’s firm has invested USD 25 million (EUR 21.2 million) in what it’s touting as the “world’s largest indoor temperature-controlled multi-stack, multi-story sea cucumber culture project,” being built in the Yingkou Free Trade Industrial Zone. Construction on the project is set to recommence in March 2021.
The indoor ambience temperature at the Yingkou facility is controlled at between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius, with the recycled water temperature is also automatically controlled. Lim said he envisions four harvests per year and said “demand is huge” in China for sea cucumber.
The Yingkou facility is being built partly in response to climate change’s toll on local sea cucumber stocks, Lim said. That impact has been borne out recently with the release of the 2019 financial report of Yulong Fisheries, a sea cucumber-focused firm based in Dalian, which shows how rising sea temperatures are having a significant impact on the company’s bottom line.
Yulong Fisheries announced a 23.5 percent year-on-year drop in sales and losses of CNY 5.8 million (USD 876,000, EUR 700,000) on revenues of CNY 5.57 million (USD 835,000, EUR 668,400) for 2019. The losses are 82 percent larger than its yearly total for 2018, and it’s blaming the collapse on particularly high temperatures in the Dalian area in 2018, which caused a reduction in its stocks and a knock-on impact on its breeding capacity for the 2019 market.
While the firm’s overall revenues collapsed, the firm’s supply for the lucrative live sea cucumber was particularly hard-hit, according to a note to investors. Last year, Yulong wrote off sea cucumber stocks worth CNY 32.5 million (USD 4.9 million, EUR 3.9 million).
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