Based in ground-zero of China’s shrimp industry Guolian Aquactic Products is a key supplier to US markets. China’s top shrimp exporter has over 2,000 hectares of shrimp ponds, most of them controlled by company staff and others contracted from local farmers.
However, Guolian stated it wants to move away from production, processing and exports to distribution and marketing of shrimp and other seafood species for the domestic market.
As part of this strategy, it plans to invest further in Internet sales, with B2B, B2C and "online to offline" departments, promoting partnerships with retailers like e-commerce major Jingdong.com and Suning, a retailer that recently entered the imported seafood distribution business.
Guolian has also been opening a new wave of smart shops across China to sell premium Argentine and Ecuadorian shrimp and its own farmed packaged shrimp products.
The firm will increase its efforts to source shrimp from Latin America as well as Arctic regions, according to Fan Chunhua, general manager of the marketing division, who says the firm also wants to import more crab and shellfish to meet rising demand.
Guolian’s performance last year was boosted when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dropped the company from its watch list of firm shipping shrimp into the United States. The firm was also able to lift sales of “high quality feed” in 2014 to 47,000 metric tons, a figure set to rise to 70,000 metric tons in 2015.
Nothing if not influential, recent visitors to Guolian headquarters included a delegation from the Thai SME Trade & Economic Development Commission, which checked out the company’s ponds and the production control center. Guolian is a model company, according to Zhang Guoqing, China’s former ambassador to Thailand, who is a friend of Guolian director Li Guotong.
Guolian executives are also close to the National Federation of Aquaculture Chamber of Commerce, Tianquan Hai and are highly involved in the Zhanjiang City Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Association.
While its shift to marketing may potentially reduce Guolian’s aquaculture output, there are corporate issues that also complicate Guolian’s future.
Like many major corporations in China, Guolian’s bottom line has been greatly buffeted by a sale of its real estate arm Zhanjiang Guofa, to Huaxinfang Real Estate, for CNY 300 million (€43.9 million/$47.1 million).
But Guolian this year used funds from the sale to join Guangzhou Ocean Investment Management Corp to invest in the Shenzhen Maritime Silk Road Fund, of which Guolian has a 20 percent stake. The fund will invest in “companies and projects working on seafood innovation, logistics and biomedicine produced from marine products”.
