Conxemar International Frozen Seafood Exhibition was held in Vigo, Spain, during Oct 2-4, by Conxemar Association of Fish Products and Aquaculture. Conxemar is an important indicator and guiding significance for the distribution of aquatic products in Western Europe. Exhibitors are mainly local traders, distributors, and suppliers of raw materials in South America, Intelligence, Norway, and the United States. Although the scale of the exhibition is small, The product is more focused. A team of International Department of Dalian Rich has returned from Vigo with enormous resource and information on Spain and Global demand, supply chains and latest policies and regulations.

“Awareness of food safety and health is acquiring growing attention from consumers, ‘Quality & Sustainability’ is, as always, the undoubted creed for Dalian Rich Group to follow” said Rock Fu, senior supervisor of International Department of Dalian Rich Group, after attending the Exhibition 2018 in Vigo, Spain. 

Spain is a coastal nation with high seafood demand. Thanks to its coastline and history of seafood industry, Spanish seafood industry is highly advanced. It’s also one of the most favored market for Chinese seafood industry. With constant supply, Spain and other EU members has passed regulations to filter unhealthy, unsafe, unsustainable seafoods. EU certificate is the most concerned topic of this Exhibition in Vigo.

Squid, hake, cod, pollock, tilapia, yellowfin sole, arrowtooth flounder, wild salmon and surimi are the favourite species of Spanish demand, especially squid and cod. In the forth quarter, there comes high demand for seasonal stocking of all kinds, thus, now it’s the best time for contracts. For European and American demands, pollock, cod and wild salmon have most eyes on them. The most likely reason might be those products are excluded in the US-Sino tariff list. According to our suppliers in the US, although 2018 is a big year of Russian pink & chum, it’s not an absolute substitution of Alaska’s. Alaska’s harvest of this year is reduced while, not like some of the Russian pink & chum which is not proper for process, the quality is still reliable. Thus, the price of Alaska pink & chum does not descend to match Russian price, but the price of good-quality Russian grade-one material ascends to match Alaska’s. Moreover, although 500-thousand-tone harvest amount brings rich material supply to the industry, due to the limitation of processing and storage abilities, qualitied material is scarce. Because of that, the processing cost is actually way higher than it seems. The high market price for final products may confuse the buyers, but scarcity of quailed material leaves no room for discount. 

Since local Spanish companies have many fishery resources and fishing quotas, their own fishing boats in the Atlantic Ocean can provide Atlantic redfish, flounder, cod, Argentine red shrimp and other varieties. More and more Spanish companies are building their own aquatic products processing plants. On the one hand, they have raw material resources; On the other hand, their labor costs are relatively low in Europe. Together with semi-mechanical processing, Spain can also provide a lot to fulfill domestic global demand. 

Beside demand and supply, EU certificate policy become one of most popular topics of this year. Previously, some Chinese containers has been returned because fishing ships are not certificated. Spain and Portugal ports authorities enforce the policy strictly. Therefore, the products exported to the region must communicate with the importers in advance, to avoid unnecessary losses caused by the failure to clear the goods.

This Exhibition 2018 is almost like previous ones. Besides, there is a trend that companies from upstream and downstream forming solid bonds thru investment, acquisition, joint venture; others form alliances to integrate resources. In the future, there will be more integration, to empower each other, to provide safe, healthy and sustainable marine foods solutions to global consumers and we will be a part of it.