Local flavorings are proving a hit with Chinese buyers of cooked crab, according to a Singaporean exporter who claims to have the first successful vacuum-packed crab product on the Chinese market.
A partnership with a Chinese processor is paying dividends for Dato Francis Ng, CEO of the House of Seafood, which imports Sri Lankan crabs into a processing plant in Fujian Province in Southeast China and sells the flavored, vacuum-packed crabs online across China.
Ng claims to sell between 1,000 and 2,000 units per day of the product, which can be microwave-heated in 10 minutes, and which retails at CNY 398 (USD 58.02, EUR 49.89) per 600-gram crab.
“We saw a lot of Chinese customers coming to our seafood restaurants in Singapore for crab and I decided to introduce our salted egg-flavored crab and our black pepper crab to the mainland China market,” Ng said.
It took over two years of research and development to get the vacuum-pack right, explains Ng.
“Doing vacuum-pack for crabs is very challenging because of the sauces and the potential build-up of bacteria,” Ng said.
Photo courtesy of House of Seafood
