New data from China’s Hainan Province has revealed its tilapia exports are still growing, despite efforts to improve domestic sales.
Producers in Hainan, a key region for tilapia production, exported 145,000 metric tons (MT) of tilapia worth CNY 2.25 billion (USD 360 million, EUR 292.50 million) in 2020 – up 16.2 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively.
The uptick comes despite China’s overall exports of processed fish and fillets falling in 2020, suggesting tilapia remains sought-after globally. It also goes against industry trends and efforts to grow domestic sales. China, which produces a quarter of the world’s tilapia, has recently focused on diverting exported tilapia to the domestic market, where the fish is in demand as an input into a new wave of informal dining chains serving traditional favorites like sour fish soup and hot pots.
Speaking at the national tilapia producers conference in Guangdong Province in December, China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Association (CAPPMA) CEO Cui He told the conference the long-term outlook for Chinese tilapia exports was “bleak.” The conference was co-hosted by CAPPMA and the local government of Maoming, the key tilapia production area in the province.
Declining Chinese tilapia exports may come as good news to producers in Africa, where governments and local businessmen have blamed cheap imports for hampering development of the domestic fish-farming sector.
“African aquaculture is developing in competition with Chinese aquaculture, which in sub-Saharan Africa often operates outside of the law and utilizes non-native species illegally imported from China. Those fish convert feed at a faster rate, giving the Chinese producers an unfair advantage. The fish also introduce pathogens into the water sources that have been highly detrimental to local species,” a feed industry source familiar with the African market told SeafoodSource.
Yet Chinese imports also take the form of seedlings, which are being smuggled into Africa from China in increasing volumes. Smuggling of fingerlings into Nigeria has been singled out by the country’s Tilapia and Aquaculture Developers Association as a source of contamination and unfair competition. And smuggled tilapia fry from China could also be hampering the EUR 10 million (USD 12 million) TRUE-FISH program, a project funded by the European Union seeking to develop East Africa’s aquaculture sector through sustainable and biosecure aquaculture in the Lake Victoria basin.
Several countries in the region have called for bans on imported tilapia, but China’s dominant position as a lender and trading partner has made governments hesitate to push the issue, the source said.
Africa’s aquaculture output remains small next to that of China, the world’s leading producer and consumer of aquaculture products. At 65 million MT in 2020, Chinese output is projected by the Chinese Agriculture Ministry to rise to 69.7 million MT by 2029. Yet Chinese output has flatlined, and its aging population and related labor issues compare unfavorably to Africa’s demographic trends.
According to Lukas Manomaitis, technical director at the Southeast Asian offices of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, Chinese investment in African aquaculture, said Chinese interest in the African market could also bring positives to the region. A larger Chinese presence in Africa’s seafood sector could help introduce a “new mindset for what can be done, which could prompt locals to invest more,” Manomaitis told SeafoodSource.
Photo courtesy of polaris50d/Shutterstock
