Catherine Lee May Ying is the general manager at Kapar, Selangor, Malaysia-based specialty shrimp firm Wynntech Star Sdn Bhd.
After earning a bachelor's in economics, Catherine Lee May Ying never thought that she would end up in the aquaculture shrimp industry. She started out in the banking industry and moved on to marketing pewter gifts, instant noodles, and organic fertilizer in the agricultural sector.
“My passion has always been marketing consumer products,” she told ShrimpTails.
One day, however, a headhunter called her to see whether she would be interested in a job in aquaculture.
“I didn’t even know what aquaculture was, but I went to the interview anyway and it was really just selling shrimp – only one type from one channel.”
The job was hers if she wanted it, and she was up for the challenge. To familiarize herself with the industry and production processes, Catherine reached out to contacts from inside and outside the company, and quickly mastered the shrimp business.
“If you’re a good marketing person, you can market anything," she said.
Achievements
For nearly a decade, Catherine worked for Blue Archipelago Bhd, a Malaysian government-funded shrimp farm and processing company. She was there when the company first started exporting. At the time, she told ShrimpTails that Blue Archipelago could only sell headless shell-on (HLSO) shrimp. The shrimp were farmed in seawater, so their taste was particularly good.
“I was lucky because Japanese buyers are very discerning when it comes to taste. They were willing to pay good money for vannamei that was seawater farmed, traceable, contained no antibiotics, and was produced according to good aquaculture practices," she said.
Export to the E.U. started after the company could sell head-on shell-on (HOSO) shrimp and a visit to Seafood Expo Global in Brussels, where Catherine met with cooks from France. This landed Blue Archipelago several contracts, selling shrimp to the cooks Catherine met during the expo, and providing packaged shrimp to Intermarché for the consumer market.
Impressive as this might be, one of Catherine’s biggest achievements was the introduction of the Blue Archipelago brand Pelagos in China. When China became a net importer in 2012, much of the Malaysian shrimp, like most imported shrimp, entered the Chinese market via Haiphong, Vietnam. The border trade is generally illegal and used by Chinese buyers to avoid import duties and regulations. This trade is purely a commodity trade, and the shrimp imported into China through Vietnam enters the ports in simple white boxes, with no mention of the supplier brand or even the origin of the shrimp. Blue Archipelago’s dependency on the Haiphong route gave Catherine’s company an insecure position.
“I noticed that a lot of companies were stuck in this traditional idea of treating shrimp as a mass commodity," she said. "As a marketeer, I started looking at how to make the Blue Archipelago shrimp different from others.”
It became her personal ambition to develop her own brand of shrimp with a story and market it directly into China. Where the Chinese market previously did not know or care about the story of the shrimp they purchased, Catherine’s Pelagos shrimp is nowadays found in China’s mainstream supermarkets, available even to the average Chinese consumer.
Malaysian shrimp
ShrimpTails asked Catherine to share her thoughts on the potential of the Malaysian shrimp industry, and what makes Malaysian shrimp unique. According to Catherine, it essentially comes down to good infrastructure and location. Malaysian farms are located near the plants and along the coastline, which enables farmers to use seawater to farm their shrimp, making it tastier, and allows them to ship live shrimp from the farm to the processing plants, thus producing truly fresh HOSO shrimp. The Malaysian coastline is long, there are no seasonal differences and the coast is relatively safe from typhoons, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions.
“Malaysia is a heaven for shrimp farming, as farmers are able to produce two to three crops a year.” Moreover, the solid infrastructure and reliable electricity supply guarantee fast transport, dependable ice production and efficient use of electrically powered paddle wheels for optimal farming and harvesting. And, last but not least, “Malaysian shrimp has always been valued by countries in Europe and Japan for its quality and ethical trade practices," Catherine said.
Future outlook
When asked about the future of the global shrimp industry, Catherine shares that, in her view, the current industry is focused too much on mass production without really thinking about the impact of this on sales and price. Shrimp-producing countries are all competing for the same global market, with market potential being reduced to nothing more than an equation, estimated based on kilograms of shrimp consumed per year.
"We all know that that’s not how consumers behave," she said.
The solution? Shrimp farmers should come together to promote shrimp consumption by educating consumers on the benefits of shrimp. This will not be easy, as shrimp faces fierce competition from other sources of protein that consumers spend their money on. And Catherine? She would love to be involved in marketing this “storied shrimp,” a quality product of which the origins are known, in order to increase shrimp consumption.
