Risk of scarcity of seafood materials at the end of the year

Seafood businesses are inefficient

According to statistics from the General Department of Fisheries (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development), recently, 120/449 seafood processing factories had to stop operating due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The remaining factories operate according to the 3 on-site mode, with a capacity of only 30-40%.

Currently, the world's shrimp powers such as India, Indonesia ... are being severely affected by the Covid-19 epidemic. The shrimp supply chains of these countries were more or less broken, reducing the supply of shrimp in the world market.

Mr. Ho Quoc Luc, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sao Ta Food Joint Stock Company, said that at present, shrimp products are easy to consume. However, taking advantage of this opportunity is not an easy task for Vietnam's shrimp industry. In addition to a number of shrimp and fish businesses that had to close for objective or subjective reasons, the rest of the operation scale was narrowed. When the remaining factories operate in the mode of 3 on-site or 1 route, 2 destinations are only enough for about 40% of employees.

“This 40% of workers from many production lines for different products, now have to gather fewer lines to ensure enough manpower on 1 line. As a result, these new lines have uneven skills, making the labor force not high. Not to mention the fact that the workers involved in production in the 3-on-the-spot production mode are always worried about the epidemic, health, and family situation ...", Mr. Ho Quoc Luc analyzed.

Business representatives said that all these factors lead to the inefficient operation of processing units in this period. In the current context, technical errors on products increase.

According to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sao Ta Food Joint Stock Company, that is just the surface of the problem. In depth, businesses still face many other difficulties, such as rising and rising costs. Thereby leading to a significant reduction in shrimp production, resulting in a decrease in export turnover in August 2021.

Raw material scarcity

Recently, many southern provinces have had to social distance to serve the prevention of the Covid-19 epidemic, including the Mekong Delta. This has led to a sharp decrease in aquaculture products such as shrimp and pangasius.

In addition, the transportation of materials and seeds for stocking the new crop also encountered many difficulties, even stalled. This makes seafood raw materials for processing and exporting at the end of 2021 and early 2022 at risk of being scarce. Especially during the Lunar New Year period, when the consumption of food in the country increases.

According to the Director General of the Directorate of Fisheries Tran Dinh Luan, there are currently three reasons why the price of seafood products has dropped a lot, especially shrimp, which has been reduced by 20-30%.

The first reason comes from the fact that factories have to stop production. The second reason is the difficulties in circulation, moving, and purchasing raw materials. The third reason is that the farming areas have to practice distance, sometimes people can't go to their shrimp ponds.

Those 3 reasons also lead to the fact that the products are not harvested, transported to the factory, even if they are transported, they are not treated or processed.

In addition, other aquatic products such as caught products also face difficulties and are reduced in price when fishing ports have to distance themselves, fishing ports have shifts of F0, and transportation from ports to processing factories faces difficulties.

The fact that the items have been reduced in price has made people bewildered, not knowing whether to continue stocking or not. Accordingly, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development as well as the General Department of Fisheries have taken measures to remove the seeds for people to continue stocking.

“These works need to be implemented soon to keep up with the upcoming period of high consumption. This is an issue of special concern to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development,” emphasized Mr. Tran Dinh Luan.

In the current difficult situation, Mr. Ho Quoc Luc said that Vietnam's shrimp industry still has a bright spot. According to statistics from the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), through the first eight months of the year, shrimp export turnover increased by 6% over the same period in 2020.

“In addition, in the current context, although the quantity of Vietnam's shrimp supply to the world market has decreased, we are not afraid of losing customers and the market by our competitors. are also facing difficulties, even more difficult than we are," said Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sao Ta Food Joint Stock Company.

Source: Pham Hieu - Le Ben - nongnghiep.vn