Shrimp production in Vietnam is being increasingly impacted by the spread of diseases, making it difficult for exporters to fulfill their orders, according to Fimex Chairman Ho Quoc Luc.
Despite offering higher prices, many processors are still unable to secure sufficient materials for processing, Luc said. A large local supplier of shrimp larvae and feed told Luc its sales of shrimp larvae have risen 20 percent, but its sales of shrimp feed only rose 3 percent between January and August. It is highly likely that the disparity between the increase of the shrimp larvae sales and the feed sales is due to disease claiming a higher toll of younger shrimp.
“The disease occurred on a relatively high percentage of ponds and the damage rate was the difference between the two numbers above. In my opinion, this number represents the current situation of local shrimp farming,” Luc said. “This difficulty will result in the high prices of raw materials for processing, the shortage of large-size shrimp, and the decrease in total production.”
Luc said there is also an increased risk farmers will use more chemicals to prevent and handle diseases in their shrimp ponds.
Continued global inflation and the uncertainties of the global shipping are further complicating matters for Vietnam's shrimp sector, Luc said.
Fimex said on 1 September, 2022, it has finished stocking 380 ponds with its second crop of 2022. The company is finalizing a deal to acquire 203 hectares of shrimp farms from Vinh Thuan Co. which it first announced in July 2022.
Fimex plans to build 240 new ponds on the newly-acquired land and start farming the first crop of shrimp there by mid-2023. Fimex also announced in April 2022 it expects to bring online two new shrimp-processing factories by Q3 2022, with combined annual capacity of 25,000 metric tons (MT). However, Luc said Fimex may miss that planned deadline for commercial operations due to a delay in equipment installation being conducted by foreign suppliers.
Fimex’s processed shrimp output through August was 14,563 MT, up 5.4 percent year-on-year. It sold 13,253 MT of shrimp through the first eight months of 2022, 13.4 percent higher year-on-year. The company’s sales revenue, including sales of agricultural products, surged 21.8 percent year-on-year to USD 161.9 million (EUR 162 million) between January and August.
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