China’s exports of freshwater crayfish fell a whopping 88.5 percent in volume and 88 percent in value terms in the first quarter of 2018 compared to the same period last year.
Freshwater crayfish is increasingly a purely domestic trade, heralding bad news for importers but good news for domestic vendors, for whom the species has become a hit with China’s younger consumers.
Domestic consumption is sucking in a larger share of China’s crustacean production. Shrimp, meanwhile, made up 10.3 percent of China’s overall seafood exports in the first quarter, with 30,010 tons exported at a value of USD 381 million (EUR 323.4 million) – up 0.37 percent and 4.24 percent, respectively.
Chinese crayfish production, which has been promoted by local governments in central China as a higher value substitution for carp, has supplied convenience food producers in Europe but irked crustacean producers in the United States, who have complained of unfair competition from Chinese imports into America.
The lure of crayfish for China’s young, urban spenders was made clear recently when Wen He You Culture Management Co, a restaurant operator based in central China that operates youth-focused crayfish and meat restaurants, last month sold a six-percent stake to the Tangrenshen Group, one of China’s biggest agricultural conglomerates.
