Chinese consumers are “voracious in their appetite for seafood,” Alibaba President Michael Evans said during his keynote at the North Atlantic Seafood Forum earlier this month.

They’re typically young, they have disposable income as middle class and wages are rising, and are curious to try out new things.

Today, more than 50 percent of their disposable income goes into spending on food and clothes. “This trend is very important,” Evans said, adding it will continue to grow.

In addition, they travel around the world and are becoming the “best ambassadors for brands” they get to know overseas.

“Market opportunities in China are enormous” for premium, high-quality seafood, Evans said.

And consumption trends are changing. Chinese consumers are increasingly demanding fresh meat, fish, milk and fruits and it is best if it’s high-quality. Due to a number of food safety scandals, many prefer imported food, Evans said.

Much of this growth will come online – and Alibaba’s growth path since it was founded in 1999 cements this fact.

Alibaba today boasts 10 different ecommerce platforms in addition to offline retailing. Evans called this “new retail.”

Its online platforms have 580 million active consumers daily, and more than 10 million active merchants. With a turnover of $547 billion annually, Alibaba sends out 60 million packages every day.

These trends are going to be significant for businesses around the world and improvements in the supply chain enables companies to send their fresh or live seafood to the country without impacting the quality of products.

Alibaba is constantly looking for new businesses to sell their products via its platforms. “We want to buy the best seafood from anywhere in the world,” Evans said.

Plans are also underway to expand to other countries. “We’re very focused on southeast Asia,” he said, while naming countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Thailand and even Russia.

The aim is to serve 2 to 2.1 billion consumers every day in the future. “They’re huge consumer markets and still very underdeveloped,” Evans said.

This story originally appeared in IntraFish's North Atlantic Seafood Forum blog.

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Alibaba president: China is hungry for high quality seafood