Suppliers are finding that depending on different port, the freight from China to LA and New York is not same, from Zhanjiang to LA, the ocean freight for frozen seafood is USD 15000 and Zhanjiang to New York, that is USD 17000. But some ports like Dalian are seeing much higher freight for frozen seafood to New York, like USD 22,000.

Even if exporters pay the ocean freight that shipping line charges,  in real practice, it is still difficult to book the container.  Some shipping lines request shipper to book the container 21-28 days prior to ETD.  The current congestion in major US port impacts the empty container return back to China.  I heard that 60 vessels are waiting in the sea around LA to dock in LA  port, 60 vessels means 600,000 containers, if you consider similar issue in other ports in USA say New york, Savanah, Houston.   This problem might not be solved in a couple of months, so the current shipping mess might continue for a couple of months.

At this moment, the shipping lines are concentrating on the main port such as LA and New York, for inland destination, they normally do not commit it, they will ship to the LA, the consignee has to figure a way to ship to inland city themselves.

RAW MATERIAL / FARMS & HARVEST

In China market, the major shrimp sizes are as follows:  HLSO

As China imposed a lot of restriction on imported Ecuadorian and Indian shrimp, so the supply from these sources is dwindling, therefore, the China domestic shrimp raw material price is going up and this trend should continue until Feb 2022.

Shrimp farming in China has no major improvement, as imported shrimp is cheaper, so the farmers have no incentive to expand farming, meantime, we see the farming area going down.   As for the disease / climate,  that is similar to last year,  no major issue.

COVID-19 IMPACT

1. China basically brought Covid-19 under control, even there is isolated covid-19 spike, but in general,  it is normal, there is some disruption but not that serious.
2. The labor short is exacerbating in China, more or more workers goes to delivery service industry and not willing to work in a factory,   so the workers are generally in short supply and this is affecting frozen seafood exporters.  Apparently 8 million workers are employed in delivery service in China. This number will keep going up and will suck more workers from the factories of seafood suppliers

In order to reduce the CO2 emission, the local authority start to reduce the electricity supply to outdated industry,  seafood processing is one of them.  In some areas, the factories are allowed to produce 4 days per week ( we call 4 on, 3 days off ).  Some people anticipate this will deal a blow to the China supply to the global supply. Such electricity supply restriction was imposed just last week, the impact of this can only be assessed a couple of months later.