In the last issue of ShrimpTails, we reported that exotic shrimp imports in southern Europe were slow, due to high stocks left in cold stores after large purchases at the end of 2017.
This is still the case, according to Spanish importers, but it seems that the bottom has been reached. Various ShrimpTails sources report that importers have slowly started to look for new purchases since the end of August. Import statistics do not yet reflect the low demand that marked the southern European market. The total import volume of exotic shrimp into Spain, Italy and France increased from almost 100,000 metric tons (MT) in the first half of 2017 to almost 110,000 MT in the first half of 2018.
In the first half of the year, all three countries saw a year-on-year increase each month. It will be interesting to see what happens with the import statistics for the third quarter of 2018. If these do not show a drop in the import volume, cold stores in Spain might be even fuller than expected, and demand in the last quarter of the year for new imports may be less than usual. Time will have to tell.
