The price of vannamei shrimp in Vietnam has dropped about 15 percent since September. Holiday demand in the United States has run its course, and though China had to import to meet demand earlier in the year, a sluggish economy there has reduced demand allowing it to meet its needs with domestic production.
Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS) in Thailand from last year halved that country’s output, boosting prices by 40 percent. The high prices stimulated farmers in Vietnam and Indonesia to switch from black tigers to vannamei. At the same time, a shortage of vannemei for processing led Vietnam to import raw materials from India and Ecuador. However, there seems to be progress in disease control in Thailand, so output is expected to improve next year. Many Vietnamese farmers will likely return to black tigers as Thai production recovers to avoid the low prices that an oversupply would then bring.
Japanese buying power has been hit by the weak yen, but demand for shrimp has begun to recover. Total imports during the first half of the year fell from the same period last year, but in September they had risen to about 9 percent above the level of the year before. For the year through October of 2014, Japan had imported 30,336 metric tons of shrimp, prawns and lobsters, according to Japanese Customs data. Further devaluation of 16 percent from JPY 104.3 to the U.S. dollar on 1 September to a low of 121.5 yen per dollar on 8 December will hurt importers, who have seen margins shrink as they try maintain sales by holding their sales prices steady.
The top five shrimp suppliers to Japan in the January-through-June period were Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Argentina and China. Argentina’s exports were of wild “seabob” shrimp and are expected to be a little down from 2013 for the year. The mix may have changed since then, as India’s Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) reports that in the fiscal year so far, from April 2013 through November 2014, increased exports of white-leg shrimp boosted India to the third position in shrimp exports to Japan, following Vietnam and Indonesia.
India has been drastically increasing its acreage of ponds for white-leg production, moving away from the large monodon shrimp variety for which it has been famous in the past. However, stress factors from heavy stocking rates are likely to put a ceiling on further rapid growth.
The Japanese market has been more favorable to India this year than last, as an arbitrary chemical residue limit has been replaced with a looser standard based on science. In January, Japan fixed the maximum residue limit for Ethoxyquin, an antioxidant preservative used in shrimp feed, at 0.2 ppm (parts per million), up from the default level of 0.01 ppm that Japanese officials had imposed on shrimp from India and Vietnam in July 2012. Following its initial determination, Japan had rejected several containers from India, causing a fall of 10.67 percent in volume and 6.59 percent in value in India’s shrimp export in that year.
