China's biggest live seafood market being built in Foshan

A futuristic looking new structure planned for Foshan city promises to be China’s largest market dealing in live seafood, and a tourist attraction.

A futuristic looking new structure planned for Foshan city promises to be China’s largest market dealing in live seafood, and a tourist attraction.

The original market was built in 1995 by Foshan Nanhai Yanbu Global Aquatic Products Trading Market Co., a joint venture between a local government owned entity and Hong Kong-based Jian Chen Investment Group. Over the years, the market expanded to 110,000 square meters of single-story stalls – twice the size of its initial design. It was recently bulldozed for redevelopment.

The new Global Seafood Market in the Nanhai district of Foshan – a prosperous industrial city in Guangdong Province – will stretch to 40,000 square meters of floor space on completion. Designed to look like a ship, the glass and steel development is intended to become a tourist attraction, fitting a trend of such developments across China, through which local governments have sought to recast seafood markets and aquaculture developments as tourist draws, creating extra jobs and tax revenue.

Even with much of the original site converted for residential real estate development, the new market will offer traditional market stalls in addition to also an e-commerce trading center and dining areas. There will also be a large aquarium geared toward tourists.

A port city, Foshan is located near Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, and Shenzhen –all major consumers of live seafood.  The market claimed to have a transaction value of CNY 10 billion (USD 1.6 billion, EUR 1.4 billion) in 2017, the last period for which figures are available.

Photo courtesy of Foshan Nanhai Yanbu Global Aquatic Products Trading Market Co.

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