South Korea paying more for Russian live king crab

While imports of the Russian live king crab into South Korea in November 2020 slowed down year-on-year the prices displayed a serious rise presumably to persist into December thus exceeding the level of the previous two years. At the same time, the total Russian live crab exports to Korea since the start of the year were recorded at more than 13 thousand metric tons, reports Megafishnet.com.

According to Japanese seafood media, the total Russian and Norwegian imports under the live, fresh and chilled crab code in November 2020 was limited to only 0.5 thousand tons, falling by more than 40% versus October despite the fairly successful course of the Far Eastern red crab fishery.

Compared to November 2019, the volume fell by 42%, with air deliveries from Norway growing almost six fold, but limited to only about 30 tons, as the Russian deliveries fell by 45%, that is, by almost 0.4 thousand tons to less than 0.48 thousand tons.

In terms of price, the situation was, however, much more interesting than in 2019.

CIF prices for imports of Norwegian products again, as in October, reached the level of US$38.50 / kg or more, 54% higher than the surprisingly low level of November 2019.

The average import price of Russian products, despite a decrease of 4.5% compared to October, was at US$34.50/kg, which was almost 15% higher than in November 2019.

Based on the results of January-November 2020, the prices of South Korean imports of Norwegian products, i.e. the Barents Sea red king crab, practically remained at the level of 2019, rising just 0.2%, to US$39,00/kg.

Meanwhile prices of imports of Russian products (red king, blue king and golden king crab as well as hairy crab), were at the level of US$33.00 per kg with an increase of almost 3%.

Imports of live, fresh and chilled crab into South Korea in 2019-2020

The volume of Norwegian live imports in January-November 2020 approached 0.6 thousand tons, increasing by almost 17%, while imports of Russian live king crabs decreased by 5% reaching 5.45 thousand tons.

The overall Russian supplies of live crab to South Korean ports increased by almost 1.0 thousand tons to more than 13.15 thousand metric tons (up almost 8%).

The total import into South Korea under the two codes (live, fresh and chilled) despite the pandemic has increased by almost 10% exceeding 18.2 thousand tons.

The deliveries from Norway approached 0.6 thousand tons, while shipments from Japan and North America were limited to about 50 tons.

The deliveries from China grew by almost 18.5% to more than 4.3 thousand tons, but the prices fell on the average by 11.5% to less than US$2.25/kg.