wet MARKET: Reflections on the Global Market

5months into 2023 & everyone is asking, what lies ahead for not just shrimp but seafood in general. It’s been a weird year with no clear purchasing patterns. 2023 started out gloomy. In January & February importers were still stuck with large (and expensive) inventories. Sentiment was rather down & people were very reluctant to take any huge strides.

Come the end of February however we began to see a bit of an upswing where importers realised that they needed to buy for the summer. This lead to mild increase in pricing as Ecuador went out of season. This was further exacerbated by the fact that the Eid holidays were going to be at the end of April & everyone knew containers would not be getting out from the last 2 weeks of April.

Traditionally, before right before the Eid holidays, most farmers would want to harvest as they do not want shrimp in their ponds without any workers being present during the long holidays. As a result, there would be a glut of shrimp around about 2­3 weeks before the holidays. Prices would normally fall around this time. Exporters know this and plan their orders accordingly. Their offers get more aggressive in the month before Eid.

Interestingly, this year turned out to be different. Due to low prices in January & February, a lot of farmers opted not to seed their ponds, which meant that come April, there was nothing to harvest. Exporters were caught off guard & rushed to find raw material at any price in order to fulfil orders. Prices shot up. They continued to stay up post Eid in defiance of global market trends. India is coming into season which means that the Indian packers are dumping. They took some orders in March with the traditional mantra of “Farmers did not seed much, raw material is going to be short, prices will go up”. They say this every year in Boston. Currently, Indian peeled shrimp is being offered at 40 cents per lb lower than Indonesian.

THE CRUST - MIDA