Friday, May 23, 9.18 a.m. ICT
Tuna supplier diversifies as earnings take a hit
Thai tuna canner PB Fishery has had a difficult year, as it took a hit in some of its biggest markets in the Middle East, which were rattled by political unrest and civil war, for instance in Syria.
The company saw its turnover "decrease slightly" year-on-year to THB 800 million, Pisit Piyarojanakul, manager at the company, told IntraFish.
As a consequence, the company is focusing more of its energy on the European market -- especially Germany -- and is now exporting about 60 percent of its total of 400-500 containers annually to the EU.
In addition, the company is now expanding into canned mackerel and sardines next month, to take off some weight of the "challenging tuna market," he said.
But due to the low prices, the company is expecting another downturn in sales for this year.
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Friday, May 23, 9.00 a.m. ICT
EMS crisis claims another victim
Thai shrimp processor Starfish, part of Starfoods Industries, has temporarily shut down its shrimp processing due to the ongoing EMS crisis, Satasap Viriyanantawanit, general manager for Thailand for Bangkok-based Siam Canadian, told IntraFish.
Processing stopped about three weeks ago, Viriyanantawanit said, but the company is continuing to produce frozen squid and surimi.
The company built a new processing facility about four years ago, just when EMS started to show its first signs in eastern Thailand.
"Since then they took a loss," Viriyanantawanit said, who is working closely with the company as one of the export partners of Starfoods.
The firm is now waiting until "things improve again," trying to keep afloat with its surimi and squid business, he said.
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Friday, May 23, 7.35 a.m. ICT
Despite coup, Thai Stock Exchange opens normally
Thursday saw the Thai army launching its 12th coup since the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1932, not counting the seven attempted ones.
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), Market for Alternative Investment (mai), Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX) and Bond Electronic Exchange (BEX) will open for securities trading as usual today "so that local and foreign investors can invest continuously, until further notice," SET said in a statement.
While the stock market was closed when the military confirmed its coup, the baht moved lower against the US dollar and changed hands late Thursday at 32.54 per dollar compared with 32.47 a day earlier.
The Wall Street Journal reported, Thailand's financial markets have remained resilient despite the political unrests which have been ongoing since November. But investors are not taking the country's ability to bounce back from crisis for granted.
The benchmark stock index is 8 percent higher year-to-date, one of Asia's top performers. Investors say Thailand's long-term economic prospects are solid. The stock market shed nearly 3 percent in the two weeks after a coup in 2006, only to rebound more than 5 percent in the following month.
"The initial reaction is probably going to be negative," the Wall Street Journal quoted Julian Mayo, co-chief investment officer at Charlemagne Capital UK, an emerging markets investor that manages around $2.6 billion globally.
"We are following it closely," he said, but added that coups in Thailand are not uncommon. "You need to be a skeptic to invest in emerging markets," he said.
However, the political disruptions curbed Thailand's economic growth rate last year to 2.9 percent, which was well behind the 7.2 percent posted by the Philippines, 5.8 percent in Indonesia and 5.4 percent in Vietnam.
This year could be worse: In the first quarter, the economy shrank 2.1 percent compared with the last three months of 2013. Growth in per capita GDP, which rose from $100 in 1961 to $4,800 in the early 2000s, has slowed dramatically, reported the Wall Street Journal.
Foreign direct investment has fallen to levels below competitors such as Indonesia.
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Thursday, May 22 5.p.m. ICT
New World of Food Beijing launched
November this year will see the inauguration of the new World of Food Beijing show, organizers China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce and Koelnmesse announced in a press conference this afternoon.
Powered by Anuga, the conference will take place between Nov. 26-28 at the Beijing National Convention Center, and was established to "cater to the fast-growing market opportunities for imported food in north China," Michael Dreyer, vice president Asia Pacific of Koelnmesse, said.
It will span 22,000 square meters, and is expected to showcase 700 exhibitors from more than 20 countries and regions.
"In its first year, the event is expected to draw more than 10,000 professional buyers from the target region," he said.
To attract more attention the event will include a "Top Buyers" collaboration program "with star enterprises of the retail food industry," he said. "These top buyers possess great procurement potential and experience with imported food."
The organizers currently collaborate with imported food supermarket BHG, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club stores, Metro, 7-11 convenience store chain, Beijing's Jenny Lou food supermarkets, and e-commerce platforms such as YiHaoDian, SF Best and COFCO's imported food retailer WoMai.
Yu Lu, vice president of the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce, briefly talked about the growing Chinese demand for high-quality imported food.
According to latest statistics, China's food imports amounted to $48.92 billion in 2013, growing 8.6 percent year-on-year. Europe and the Oceania region performed especially well, Lu said.
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Thursday, May 22, 4.45 p.m. ICT
Thailand the new driver for Asian seafood imports?
Thailand is slowly but surely shifting to become one of Asia's biggest importers for its own domestic market, Heiko Lenk, CEO at Bangkok-headquartered Lenk Frozen Foods Asia, said while running into IntraFish on the Thaifex show floor.
Driven by the growth in tourism, he believes the country could become a major "engine" for seafood imports.
The company launched its own Thai imports department two years ago and is now successfully selling squid, tuna and pangasius products to Thai clients.
In terms of the long-lauded Thai shrimp recovery, Lenk said there will be no recovery -- at least not this year, reiterating what IntraFish had heard earlier this week.
"I think this year's production levels could even remain below last year's figures [of 250,000 metric tons]," he said.
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Thursday, May 22, 4.20 p.m. ICT
'Social' seafood
Global Seafood Marketing Group -- a working alliance -- is all about corporate social responsibility.
As such, the group, whose members include high-profile companies such as SeaValue, Kingfisher, Thai Union and Anusorn Mahachai Surimi, has pledged to re-invest about 30 percent of its earnings into CSR.
Spearheaded by group CEO Faisal Hassan -- whose father is one of Pakistan's 10 richest men -- the company is maximizing its by-products by producing and selling as ready-to-eat products cheaply to poor countries, for instance in Africa, or disaster areas at a price which covers only about 50 percent of production costs.
"We want to make a change in areas where people would kill for food," Hassan told IntraFish. He himself donates about 90 percent of his earnings.
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Thursday, May 22, 1.21 p.m. ICT
Viciunai looking to Thai salmon import market
Lithuanian surimi and seafood processor Viciunai is making use of its trade connections in Asia and is now targeting the Thai high-end foodservice market with its specialist salmon products.
Especially the sushi restaurant market is growing, Paul Agnew, sales and marketing manager UK and Ireland, told IntraFish, and the company looking at more partners with its customized salmon products, or "high-end niche product," as he called it.
"We're currently exploring the market," Agnew said. Vici's advantage, he believes, is in the quality of its products. "We're importing fresh salmon to our plant in Lithuania, process it there when it's freshest, pack and freeze and ship it over to Asia," he said. "Once-frozen is better than double-frozen."
While the market share is still very small, Vici's motto in Asia is growth and Thailand is a great starting point, Agnew said.
"Our connections are our biggest asset," he said.
In the long-term setting up a production facility in the region would make sense, he said, but this is depending on how the market develops.
"We explore, we develop and then we produce," he said.
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Thursday, May 22, 12.40 p.m. ICT
Lucky Union extends Thai factory, launches new products
Lucky Union just started construction for the expansion of its factory in Samutsakorn, an hour's drive from Bangkok.
The extended facility will boost production capacity 1.5 times to 35,000 metric tons,Weerawat Limim, sales executive at the company, told IntraFish.
The company is producing surimi filamented crab sticks and other surimi-based products at the plant.
For Thaifex itself, it launched several new product, including a surimi loaf for hamburgers and sandwiches, pre-fried surimi tofu, and a Samosa wrap.
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Thursday, May 22. 12.05 p.m. ICT
Cambodian shrimp start-up plans processing plant
Triple'N'Lucky, a newly founded company in Cambodia, is planning to build a processing plant in the Siem Reap Province to close in on the Singaporean, Hong Kong and Chinese markets.
The company recently bought a plot of land close to the where the shrimp are caught, Ky Meng Kuy, representative director at the firm, told IntraFish. It is also purchasing machinery in China.
"We want to customize for clients needs," he said. While he was unable to share details of investment, he described it as "huge."
The company will be sourcing shrimp from about 100 fishing boats, all assembled in a small village in the midst of a lake, which is about 75km wide and 150km long in the rainy season.
The company hopes to sell about 150 metric tons of shrimp meat in the first year of operation. About 2.5kg of the 1.5-3.5-grams heavy shrimp relate to 1kg of shrimp meat.
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Thursday, May 22, 11.22 a.m. ICT
WWF making big strides in Indonesia, Thailand
It was only six months ago that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) set up shop in Bangkok, and it is already seeing "obvious interest" for sustainable growth, Nicholas Peter Stacher of sustainable markets support unit WWF Thailand, told IntraFish this Thursday morning.
In particular, there is great potential for the newly launched Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) standard, with bigger companies showing interest.
It is, however, not an easy road ahead as many of the country's small-scale farmers don't have the financial resources to go through the certification process, Stacher said.
"We're helping them to find investors to fund the certification process," he said.
Also the financial hole EMS left in many of the farmer's pockets makes things more difficult. "Two years ago they would have had the money to invest but right now might not be the right time."
The WWF is currently running pilot projects with two farms, which "hopefully" can be used as case studies to get more farmers to invest in certifications, Stacher said.
Meanwhile in Indonesia, the group is making big strides with its Seafood Savers program, which was launched in 2009. Next month, it will organize a road show in Jakarta, to introduce Seafood Savers, and to talk about issues and solutions to retailers, producers and local authorities, Niki Nofari of the Seafood Savers Secretariat, said.
The biggest issue in Indonesia, according to Nofari, is the lack of proper fisheries regulation to "protect and organize the Indonesian territory," he told IntraFish.
WWF is working with the government to set up regulations. In addition, it is also helping big Indonesian fishing firms to obtain MSC certification.
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Wednesday, May 21, 5.36 p.m. ICT
Price reigns over surimi purchases
Thai family-run Pacific Fish Processing (PFP) is increasingly getting priced out in the tropical surimi market by "cheaper" countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
"Our neighbors have become our competitors," Piyakarn Piyapatana, international marketing executive at the firm, told IntraFish.
The company turned over $50 million (€36.6 million) last year, but is trying to gain foot in new markets such as the Middle East, and existing market such as the United States and Europe, to balance the price pressure.
Importing the already expensive raw materials is the biggest cost, Piyapatana said, as well as finding reliable distributors in export countries.
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Wednesday, May 21, 5.05 p.m. ICT
SeaWealth brand plans on hold
SeaWealth, owned by the Wales Group, was planning to launch a brand for its specialty VAP products in its biggest export markets, but is putting plans on hold -- due to EMS.
"My ultimate goal is to launch a brand, but the shrimp business is too difficult right now,"Wannasiri Aramwattananont, manager at the company, told IntraFish.
Instead the company is putting all its focus on diversifying its product mix to overcome the crisis without major damage. Squid and cuttlefish are high on the list and the company is now producing about 1,200 metric tons of pre-fried items, ready-to-cook dishes, skewers and more.
As a result, its processing factory is still running at 100 percent capacity, Aramwattananont said. Further diversification comes through the expansion of its imports business, she said.
But battling EMS, higher labor costs is not enough: Aramwattananont is also seeing a slowdown in the domestic market. Triggered by the political protests, traffic and the increase in end-consumer prices but rather stay at home than eating out, she said.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2.59 p.m. ICT
Do you know where your fish is from?
There is a 50/50 chance you eat illegal fish instead of legally and sustainably caught fish in Asia, a Thaifex visitor, who didn't want to be named, said while stopping at the IntraFish booth earlier today.
The source, who works for a big Oceanian company, is trying to create a bigger market for certified fish in Asia, assisting smaller companies to obtain certifications such as Friend of the Sea (FoS) and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).
While targets are high, the reality is still very much different, he said. "There's still no level playing field in Asia," he said. It is incredibly difficult to control fishing off the coast of New Zealand, Australia and southeast Asian countries, and a lot of the fish ends up as 'sustainable' fish on dinner plates in Singapore and Hong Kong.
"I have to play police quite a bit," he said.
Meanwhile, the demand for sustainable and certified fish in Singapore and Hong Kong is growing "big time" especially at high-end restaurants and retailers, he said.
One issue is, however, that not many high-end fisheries have obtained certification due to the small scale and high costs. "It's usually commercial whitefish that's certified not high-end fish such as snapper, redfish and so on that would be eaten at high-end restaurants."
"Certification is still too expensive for companies for instance in Malaysia but hopefully the gap will close soon," he said.
"It's a never-ending battle," the source told IntraFish.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2.19 p.m. ICT
US labor report downgrade, EMS dominate talks at Thaifex
Thai shrimp recovery? Not so much, is the picture IntraFish got after talking to some industry watchers on the Thaifex show floor this morning.
"At the beginning of the year we thought we'd recover [from EMS] but it hasn't happened," Siam Canadian's Gulkin told IntraFish.
"We were probably too optimistic," he said. "It was speculative optimism."
Production levels will probably not achieve Department of Fisheries' prediction of 350,000 metric tons this year, but probably settle at 300,000 metric tons for the whole year.
Attapol Mongkonrat, marketing executive at Asian Group, even believes production won't exceed last year's numbers of 250,000 metric tons.
One of the biggest problems is that no one has been able to pinpoint the cause of EMS. Mongkonrat believes it is in the broodstock, but others talk about environmental cause such as salinity levels, cleanliness of ponds and stocking density.
"This year is a write-off in terms of profits," Gulkin said.
And as if EMS wouldn't be enough, Thai processors now also face the threat of potentially being downgraded to Tier III in the upcoming US labor report, which could have fatal consequences for some, especially smaller, producers, Mongkonrat said.
"The labor issue has been a problem quite a while," he said. Should Thailand be downgraded it would have the same status "as a Third World country," he said, and that wouldn't be good for business.
"The government is doing everything but politically we're not in a good position right now."
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Wednesday, May 21, 1.57 p.m. ICT
US buyers holding off on shrimp purchases
The global shrimp market, especially in the United States, is "very quiet" at the moment, Jim Gulkin, CEO at Thai frozen seafood exporter and supplier Siam Canadian, told IntraFish.
Buyers mainly hold off on purchases due to higher price inventories and generally lower demand in the market. "Buyers don't want to take a price cut," he said.
The buying window for the August to February products, however, is closing fast. "They will have to make a buying decision in June, July latest," he said, especially for big retailers such as Walmart and Safeways.
After a short period of lower shrimp prices -- mainly due to emergency harvests by farmers -- prices moved back up again to their previous heights, he said.
"Now again we're above levels where you can really sell," Gulkin told IntraFish.
"But at a certain point there will be an influx of buyers, regardless of inventories," he predicted. "In my view, [Thai shrimp] prices will hit bottom then."
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Wednesday, May 21, 1.15 p.m. ICT
Growth market Dubai
The number of visitors from Dubai at this year's Thaifex has jumped significantly -- all looking for "cheap" imports for the growing retail and foodservice market in the region.
Noorudheen Pilakkal, managing director at Amwaj Fish Trading, is looking to close some contracts with frozen freshwater fish suppliers from Thailand, he said during a pitstop at the IntraFish booth.
"I import about four to five containers from Thailand at the moment but demand is growing," he said.
Price is the most important factor for sourcing from Asia, he said.
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Wednesday, May 21, 11.00 a.m. ICT
Thai processor shuts down plant as EMS hits
Thai vertically integrated shrimp supplier Asian Group had to temporarily suspend production at one of its six plants in Thailand due to the ongoing Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS) crisis, Attapol Mongkonrat, marketing executive at the firm, told IntraFish.
"We had to shut down and are now waiting for the situation to improve," he said. EMS had a "terrible" impact on the Asian Group.
Shrimp processing used to account for about 50 percent of the company's business -- next to tuna processing, shrimp feed, shrimp farming, squid and cuttlefish processing -- it had to increasingly focus on diversification to keep production capacity up.
The $300 million (€219.4 million) turnover company also moved into fish re-processing for Japanese customers to take some pressure off its shrimp business.
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Wednesday, May 21, 10.45 a.m. ICT
Tuna's import duty challenge
Import duties -- next to the fluctuating raw material prices -- pose currently the biggest challenge for Thai tuna processors, May Rojanachaichanint, international procurement manager at SeaValue, told IntraFish.
Losing the EU's GPS status earlier is a "huge block for exporters," he said, especially for smaller companies. SeaValue is heavily supporting the implementation of a free trade agreement with the EU.
Exports account for about 90 percent of SeaValue's sales, Europe, Japan, the United States and Dubai are currently the biggest markets for the firm, which reported revenues of THB 40 billion (€902.7 million/$1.2 billion) in 2013.
The company, which is part of Wales Group, is producing about 1,000 metric tons of canned tuna -- mostly for private label clients -- value-added products and pet food across four processing facilities.
The current raw material prices fluctuations pose an additional challenge. "The price today is $1,300 (€950.80) per metric ton but that could change again tomorrow," Rojanachaichanint said.
Despite the challenges, the group is prepped for growth also this year, and is also looking at new emerging markets such as Africa. "We want to go up [in turnover] every year," he said.
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Wednesday, May 21 8.00 a.m. ICT
Martial law, but Thaifex goes ahead
Tuesday saw Thailand's army declare martial law in an attempt to restore stability in the country after months of political unrests and protests, which affected the capital Bangkok heavily.
While the 11th edition of the Thaifex -- World of Food Asia show will go ahead as planned, organizers Koelnmesse advises visitors to plan ahead, as traffic disruptions are expected, and to avoid designated protest sites and their immediate vicinity.
"Otherwise, the Bangkok metropolitan region currently appears calm, and most day-to-day activities are carried out normally -- with schools open, public transportation running as scheduled, and businesses operating as usual," it said in an update on its website Tuesday.
Taking place at the IMPACT Exhibition and Convention Center in the north of the city, visitors can look forward to around 1,400 exhibitors from close to 40 countries in three halls.
In its first edition last year, World of Seafood played host to more than 170 seafood exhibitors from around Thailand. The line-up in 2014 boasts an increase of 10 percent in exhibition space, with participation from major players in the Thai seafood processing industry, Koelnmesse said.
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