New Delhi: China continues to be an important seafood import market, given that the worlds most populous country has an increasing presence of upper and middle classes who are keen on healthy food, experts said at the 22nd India International Seafood Show (IISS) in Kochi of Kerala.
The marine food industry, though, must wake up to the fact that ‘new retail’ is the trend fast replacing ‘online’, where Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is building a retail ecosystem,innovatively blending online and offline channels in a unified way featuring the consumer at the centre in unexpected ways, a technical session of the February 7-9 summit in Kochi noted.
All the same, one should be wary of over reliance on China as a partner in seafood trade, the speakers pointed out while deliberating on the topic “Prospective Markets & Regulatory Environment”.
Carson Roper, Seafood Industry Consultant, France, in his talk on ‘China and Farm-Raised Shrimp’, said that the East Asian country is a major marine products market that remains largely untapped.
Projections say that China will continue to feature among the worlds top 11 seafood markets, he observed in the presentation that focused on how China impacts global seafood trade and consumption.
The other speakers were Lee Chee Wee of Singapores Aquaculture Innovation Center (on ‘Live shrimp transportation), Christopher Priddy, International Relations Specialist, USFDA, India (Overview of FDA regulations for seafood) and R M Mandlik, Deputy Director-Marketing, MPEDA (Importing country regulations and its impact on trade).
