High demand for crayfish in China has been a boon to Orvesa, company chairman Vehbi Merzeci told SeafoodSource last week in Hong Kong during Seafood Expo Asia.
Orvesa, which has its headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, has two production plants in the country located in the district of Dinar, Afyonkarahisar province, and in Hoşköy, Tekirdağ province. The company is currently the largest exporter of crayfish in Turkey, and has seen exports increase rapidly over the past few years.
Despite a record-high production of crayfish inside China in 2017, surging demand has driven imports to the country up even as production has increased.
According to Merzeci, the crayfish business at Orvesa totaled USD 42 million (EUR 35.9 million) in revenue in 2017.
“It’s incredible demand in China,” he said. “The prices are going up, I saw in some places that it’s doubled in the last three years.”
Merzeci said he believes the demand has been driven by a trend in China. “If you talk about China, I think it’s now a trend, a popular trend for the summer time,” he said.
He also believes that trend is starting to move on to other places as well. Other countries, such as the Ukraine, the United States, and Canada, have had increased demand for his product. Merzeci said he’s noticed that even in those countries, the demand is largely coming from people who have Chinese origins.
“From U.S. and Canada, the people are also Chinese,” he said.
Merzeci also said the increased demand is a tertiary result of the increased quality of life and earning power of the middle class in China.
“I think so, if you think about China, there are billions of people. The lifestyle, what they earn, is getting better. They will demand more and more items,” Merzeci said. “China is getting stronger, the people are getting richer.”
