Despite being a relatively young sector in India, white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) farming is making an increasingly important contribution to the country’s seafood export trade.
While the production of black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) has been central to India’s aquaculture and fisheries output for many years, with farming predominantly located in West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala, white shrimp is a much more recent introduction with regions such as Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Odisha leading the way. And with this total volume increase, exports have grown accordingly.
According to the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), India produced more than 400,000 metric tons (MT) of vannamei in 2015-2016, and the imminent introduction of domestic broodstock programs will provide the opportunity to grow this output considerably (currently all of the country’s broodstock is imported).
Overall, India earned USD 4.7 billion (EUR 4.5 billion) from its seafood exports (all species and formats) in 2015-2016, down from a record USD 5.5 billion (EUR 5.3 billion) in the previous 12 months. This decline was largely brought by an improvement in the global supply of shrimp and a lowering of prices as more countries recovered from the early mortality syndrome (EMS) outbreaks that had devastated stocks in a number of key production regions, said MPEDA.
As such, the average unit value for frozen shrimp from India in 2015-2016 fell to USD 8.28 (EUR 7.91) per kg from USD 10.38 (EUR 9.92) in the previous 12 months. However, the authority believes current trade conditions are very positive with the value of its shrimp exports up 13 percent in November 2016 compared to a year previously.
The United States is the largest market for Indian seafood followed by Southeast Asian countries and the EU, with frozen shrimp accounting for 66 percent of the total revenue.
Indeed India has overtaken Indonesia as the U.S. market’s No. 1 shrimp supplier, providing the country with 122,700 MT of shrimp in the January through October 2016 period, followed by Indonesia with 98,265 MT and Thailand with 63,338 MT.
