SIGNING SEAFOOD DEALS
Victoria Co-operative Fisheries Ltd. looking to fill ‘gaps’ in processing season
Victoria Co-operative Fisheries Ltd. looking to fill ‘gaps’ in processing season.
It’s low season at Victoria Cooperative Fisheries Ltd. but a recently signed deal with a major Chinese seafood distributor has production humming along at the Neil’s Harbour plant.
There are about 25 people currently working at the seafood processing facility in Victoria County two and sometimes three days a week to package an order for three, 40-foot containers of Jonah crab.
Each container holds approximately 36,500 pounds of the shellfish, said Osborne Burke, general manager of Victoria Cooperative Fisheries Ltd.
He’s currently meeting with customers and new clients at the Seafood Expo Asia trade show in Hong Kong. He left last week to meet with customers in Shanghai with the hope to build on existing business relationships. The seafood expo ends Thursday.
“We’re continually courting new customers wherever we can, and we’ve also built up over the past three to four years a lot of contacts in Asia, particularly in Shanghai … and Hong Kong,” he told the Post in a telephone interview from Hong Kong.
At a time when the production facility would be shutdown with his employees laid off following the summer snow crab season, there is reason to believe new product lines could keep some workers employed for longer periods of time.
Another Chinese customer, said Burke, has purchased a 20foot container of Jonah crab — a species similar in size and shape to the brown crab shipped from the U.K. to shellfish-hungry China.
While the Jonah crab is valued less than snow crab, there is a demand for the product in markets across China, Burke said.
And demand for Jonah crab, which has typically been filled by United States suppliers, has been thrown on ice due to the current U.S.-China trade war.
Washington and Beijing have already applied charges to $50 billion of each other’s goods in a tit-for-tat trade dispute.
The tense relationship between the world’s two largest economies has left room for suppliers in other countries to aggressively seek out willing Chinese seafood buyers.
“While the (trade) tiff is going on, and it could be months or it could be years … in the interim, Chinese buyers are looking for a similar product out of another country such as Canada where they don’t have to pay the extra 25 per cent (tariff),” Burke said.
“That’s not going to happen to all products but right now it certainly has speeded up our process.”
The order being filled now for Jonah crab could be expanded to 10 container shipments if the Chinese customer approves of the quality of the product. The customer, who Burke would not name due to competitive reasons, is planning a visit to the production facility later this week.
At full capacity during lobster season, there are approximately 140 employees working at Victoria Co-operative Fisheries. The plant stays open from April to January, except for a slowdown period in September and October each year.
By expanding into new product lines, Burke said the cooperative is moving closer to becoming a year-round operation.
“The time and effort is starting to come full circle because you can’t do it overnight and you can’t do it in one visit or four visits. But it’s starting to pay off on some of the species that we’ve been looking to fill gaps (in our season),” he said.
“Now that gap is being filled and there is potential (for an) increase (in production) next year. It’s something we’re very pleased with.”