Sharp rising price for shrimp export in the first month of this year

There was an impressive growth in Vietnamese shrimp export value in January 2011 with 47 percent to the same period last year; the average price of 9.22 USD per kg, up 15 percent to the same period of 2010 while export volume rose 27.5 percent, reports www.megafishnet.com with reference to VASEP.

According to Vietnam Customs, in January 2011, there were 198 Vietnamese shrimp enterprises exporting to 58 foreign markets with 16,000 MT, worth US$146.5 million.

Shrimp export was at the highest share of the key items, accounting for 33.7 percent of the total seafood export value in January 2011. Two main products (black tiger and whiteleg shrimp) went on increasing sharply in which whiteleg shrimp rose 50 percent in volume and 79 percent in value, black tiger rose 28 percent and 40 percent, respectively.

Whiteleg shrimp export reached 4.6 thousand MT, valued at US$35.7 million, accounting for 24.4 percent of the total shrimp export value, black tiger shrimp export reached 8.5 thousand MT, valued at US$87.3 million, accounting for nearly 60 percent.

In January 2011, shrimp enterprises increased export to the leading markets such as Japan, the U.S, EU, Canada, South Korea because their demands strengthened and import price was more attractive while shrimp export to Australia and some Asian markets such as Taiwan, the Philippines reduced nearly 40 percent in both volume and value. Average export shrimp price sank 4.3 percent to 8.96 USD per kg compared to the same period last year.

The average shrimp export price to the U.S stood at the highest level with 11.75 USD per kg, up 17.6 percent to the same period last year, followed by Switzerland with 11.51 USD per kg, up 15.2 percent, Canada - 10.62 USD per kg, up 11.4 percent and export price to other market was also positive. Especially, shrimp export volume to ASEAN fell sharply with 54.5 percent while average price rose nearly doubled from 4.64 USD per kg to 8.57 USD per kg which indicated that this market started to have interest in high grade shrimp.

The top 10 domestic shrimp exporters in January 2011 were Minhphu Seafood Corp; Stapimex; Quoc Viet Co., Ltd; Sea Minh Hai; MTV Viet Frozen Food I-Mei Co., Ltd, Thuan Phuoc Corp, Phuong Nam Co., Ltd; Fimex Vn, Camimex and Clean Sea Food JSC, accounting for 40.7 percent of the total shrimp export value.

The 10 biggest shrimp importers included Japan, the U.S, China and Hong Kong, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK, Australia and France, accounting for 72.6 percent of the total shrimp export value in which export to Canada had the best growth with nearly 8 times compared to last year, export to Germany with nearly 3 times, Switzerland with 2.5 times, and other markets with 15 percent to 68 percent increase.