Russian crab shipments to South Korea displaying high value versus falling volume
The Russian shipments of live king crab to South Korea, which had been falling for three months in a row until May, intensified very sharply in this month, but remained at a lower level compared to last year. Imports of Norwegian products were also much less active than in May 2020, but, as in the case of the Russian shipments, at a much higher price, but the price rise when importing the Russian products was much more powerful, reports Megafishnet.com.
The average CIF price of imports of Norwegian products according to the “other live crab” code reached almost US$45.00/kg in May and was 20% higher than last year, despite the fact that it was already significantly lower than the peak value shown in March, when import prices from Norway approached the level of US$52.00/kg.
At the same time, prices for the Russian live king, which were at their peak in April, when they reached the level of US$57.00/kg, fell by almost 20% in May, but their level was still almost US$46.50/kg, which is at least 130% higher than the price level in May 2020. Meanwhile, the Russian volume fell more than twice (-53%) and was limited to about 0.4 thousand tons, as the supplies from Norway fell by 46%, amounting to less than 15 tons.
Nevertheless, according to the results of January-May 2021, Norwegian supplies of live red king crab from the Barents Sea fishery to the South Korean market increased by 24.5% and reached almost 0.24 thousand tons.
The Russian shipments, which were represented not only by the red king crab, but also by blue king crab, as well as hairy crab, fell by almost 41% in the face of strong competition from the Chinese market and were limited to only 1.52 thousand tons, which is at least 1.0 thousand tons less than the volume of January-May 2020.
As a result, the total volume of Russian shipments of live crab to South Korea by the beginning of June also turned out to be almost 1.0 thousand tons less than last year and was limited to less than 5.0 thousand tons, since the supply of snow crab increased by only 0.5%, amounting to less than 3.39 thousand tons.
At the same time, in terms of value, the results of Russian exports still look very good, since in the conditions of a serious price rise, the total value of imports from Russia, which in January-May 2020 was already at a very high level of US$150 million or more, increased by almost US$20.0 million. and reached about US$171.5 million.