Demand for imported cod is picking up fast among Chinese consumers thanks to online sales targeted at young urbanites and parents who are being encouraged to use cod as a healthful food for infants. A phone survey of a dozen cod importers and traders in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Dalian suggests that sales of cod steaks and filets are up 20 percent in volume terms year-on-year in the first six months of the year.
Traders say demand for cod — traditionally imported for processing and re-export — is growing thanks to a promotion of the fish as suitable for baby food. Numerous online traders are using the eBay-like Taobao portal to sell imported cod using terms like “baby specific” and “baby suited.”
In single-child China people are “prepared to spend a fortune on their babies and we have found a lot of parents looking to cod as a supplement, a bit like imported baby milk powder,” said a trader at Beijing-based Bei Bei Shi Pu, who says his firm gets an 80 percent margin on pieces of tender cod which it sells at CNY 98 (USD 15.92, EUR 11.90) per 400 grams. The firm is looking for new suppliers in Europe as well as Russia and expects a 20 to 30 percent growth in year-on-year sales in 2014.
Chinese cod importers and traders also point to rising sales among young consumers keen on western dining experiences. A promotion campaign for the Qixi festival (termed “Chinese Valentine’s Day”) on 2 August helped shift 1.5 tons of cod in three days, explained a sales manager at Shanghai He Yu Frozen Goods Corp. He Yu typically requires two weeks to shift that amount. The firm, which sells frozen and prepared black cod steaks under the Fiords brand, feels the CNY 1,200 (USD 195, EUR 145) per 500-gram premium price mark it charges customers is justified “because the product is imported from France,” says the trader.
Judging from visits to the Jingshen and Sanyuanli seafood markets in Beijing, many Chinese traders are selling their cod as “French” but it’s clear that all of China’s cod isn’t from France. “We are marketing it as French because that sells best in China…we give customers cooking instructions to serve the cod western style with wine,” explained the Shanghai He Yu salesman.
Imports of cod and other seafood are increasingly affordable given that China’s currency (CNY) has eased against other currencies but remains at a two-decade high, says one Guangzhou-based seafood trader. “Tilapia prices and catfish prices have jumped more than 25 percent in real terms in the past decade so cod and pollock are starting to look more and more affordable for China’s own consumption,” explained the Guangzhou trader who supplies the Metro supermarket chain in China.
Rising incomes in China and the spread of modern retail formats like 24-hour convenience stores make cheap whitefish species like cod very attractive for use in fast-food and in convenience chains like 7-11 and CRV, which use cod in their lunches and in the quick-eats category in Beijing stores visited by SeafoodSource.
Marketing by two key Scandinavian exporter nations as well as an increasing trade interdependency between Russia and China are increasing the domestic consumption of cod in China. A free-trade agreement with Iceland and a possible similar deal with Norway (being negotiated) will give China access to increased amounts of North Atlantic whitefish like cod. Both the Icelandic and the Norwegian trade boards are promoting sales of cod in particular to Chinese buyers. “We expect a significant domestic consumption of cod in China as it is an increasingly good value proposition next to cheap freshwater fish here whose price is rising [faster than that of cod],” notes a Beijing-based Norwegian trade official.
Use of cod has increased in fast food with chains like McDonald’s selling cod burgers for CNY 11.50 (USD 1.86, EUR 1.39) in their Chinese outlets. Sales of cod burgers tend to rise when there’s a scandal over chicken or pork, according to the manager of the large-scale McDonald’s outlet in Beijing’s commercial Sanlitun district, which retails cod burgers at CNY 11 (USD 1.78, EUR 1.33). “We’ve had scandals over chicken and pork in the past year so we sold twice as many fish burgers,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese importers and processors expect to secure greater access to Russian cod and pink salmon in light of ongoing tensions between Russian and the West, which saw Russia ban imports of EU, U.S. and Australian seafood. An agreement between China and Moscow signed on 8 August allows for a “cross-border e-commerce channel” allowing speedier shipment of goods after a single check in the origin country. This will allow easier transshipment of raw materials from Russia and processed food from China into Russia.
