Ecuador's shrimp exports broke another volume record in 2023, and 2024 started much in the same vein, but the world’s leading shrimp supplier has seen trade slow as the year is hitting its final quarter, according to data compiled by Global Shrimp Forum Foundation Managing Director Willem van der Pijl.
Sharing key trade trends that are shaping the global shrimp industry at the 2024 Global Shrimp Forum (GSF), held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in early September, van der Pijl said that on a global scale, shrimp exports have been increasing since 2016 and that this rise has largely been driven by exports from Ecuador and India.
Ecuador exported just over 1.2 million metric tons (MT) of shrimp last year, representing a 15 percent rise on 2022’s total. Following that up, export totals in the second quarter of this year set an all-time quarterly record, hitting 344,000 MT.
Ecuador's growth trend is slowing in 2024, forecast at 10 percent, or a total of just under 1.3 million MT of shrimp exports. The slower growth trend, primarily caused by a decline in demand from China, is expected to continue into 2025, according to van der Pijl. The U.S. and E.U. have had to absorb a lot of the additional supply but have not been able to fully make up for the lack of Chinese demand, he said.
“During Covid-19, the U.S. and Europe absorbed most of the rapid growth from Ecuador. Then, coming out of Covid, it was mainly China that absorbed that growth. In the first half of this year, it’s not been China that's absorbing more shrimp; it's again the U.S. and Europe – meaning more competition for other suppliers in those markets,” he said.
Van der Pijl predicted Ecuador will supply China with around 650,000 MT of shrimp by the end of this year, accounting for 50 percent of Ecuador's total production, while the U.S. and European markets will up their sourcing to around 250,000 MT each.
“In product weight, we’re getting to a kind of equilibrium between the two blocs,” he said. “It’s very likely that we won't see the same level of growth as we have seen in the previous years from Ecuador. I think the Ecuadorians still expect a bit more growth in the second half … but the curve is really flattening.”
India, the world’s number-two shrimp exporter, experienced a modest 1 percent increase in exports in 2023 to nearly 713,000 MT. In H1 2024, the country’s exports were 5 percent ahead year over year. Van der Pijl said he is “quite confident” this growth trajectory will continue to the end of the year.
“People were expecting a decline in India this year, but it has not been happening – up 5 percent in Q1 and 4 percent in Q2,” van der Pijl said. “[In India], they are again predicting that at some point, the exports should drop. But, the data is not supporting those claims. We don’t see the Indian export volumes dropping. If there’s another 5 percent increase in the second half of this year, the [exports] will be at 734,000 MT.”
The U.S. and Europe have made up dropping Chinese demand for shrimp from India, but are signs the U.S. is not as reliable as some Indian exporters would hope.
After a 14 percent year-over-year drop in June, U.S. shrimp imports fell 12 percent in July. U.S. shrimp imports for the year are now 4 percent behind 2023, 19 percent behind 2022, and 16 percent behind 2021.
U.S. shrimp imports from Ecuador and India in June fell by 20 percent and 15 percent year over year, respectively. However, imports from India remained stable in July, while imports from Ecuador fell by 30 percent.
The decline in Ecuadorian trade is most likely linked to the preliminary anti-dumping duties applied to Ecuador’s exports to the United States, according to van der Pijl.
Indonesia and Vietnam – the two other main suppliers to the U.S. market – saw their U.S. shrimp exports contract by 10 percent and 16 percent, respectively, in July. However, the year-to-date trend between the two countries is different, with Indonesia’s supply into the market dropping 15 percent year over year and Vietnam’s increasing by 4 percent.
