Progress and outlook for Seafood Export from Russian Far East in January 2011
January is a dead season. Fish caught in 2010 was sold in December, and in January was just delivered to buyers. At the same time, there was strong influence of long holidays in Russia combined with preparations to lunar New Year in China, reports www.megafishnet.com.
A week before the holiday (the Rabbit year will start on February, 2) factories are stopped and will not commence before February, 11. Most of them plan to work at full capacity not earlier than in March, or even April. Nobody wants to build up stock, and it's difficult to sell anything.
Pollock HG price went down (as usual before lunar New Year). Early January the most popular size 25-30 cm could be sold at US$1350-1370 CFR China, but by the middle of the month it became difficult to find a buyer at $1250. As for small fry 20-25 cm, it is success to sell higher than $1100. It's worth noting that prices CFR Dalian are generally higher than CFR Qingdao.
Fishmeal sales became difficult. CIQ has enforced its promised restrictions, and legal import of Russian fishmeal to China has been stopped until Russian fishmeal producers finish registration procedures in Chinese ministry of agriculture. Importers and traders who intended to get fishmeal into China using various compromises with authorities are cancelling contracts. However, there are rumors that one of big companies intends to buy all the free fishmeal at decent price to supply it to China when all the necessary permissions are ready.
January is the end of herring season in seas of Okhotsk and Bering. Nothing unexpected here. Prices are stable from the end of November. This season there were unusually much large size herring from Sea of Okhotsk, and it pressured on both its price in China, and price of Olyutorskaya herring. Japanese buyers decided it would be better to replace greater part of Olyutorskaya with cheaper raw material from Okhotsk. One of Kamchatka companies tried to sell 400 MT of Olyutorskaya for a month and a half and this very fact provided pressure on the whole market.