Although the cost of farmed shrimp in Vietnam is still high, transportation costs are high, and some major shrimp producing countries have improved processing, in general, Vietnamese shrimp still have a great advantage in the market, especially in the high-end market segment.
Indian and Ecuadorian shrimp are very cheap as their low cost of farming is one of their advantages. Secondly, these countries still have a growth strategy such as: India in 2015 set a target to increase the ratio of processed shrimp to Block shrimp and they bought more than 1,000 IQF freezers from Vietnam, so they started gradually dominate the fresh IQF shrimp segment in the US, peaking with a market share of 44% in some years. Currently, India is taking the second step to conquer the Japanese market with boiled shrimp products - frozen cooked and frozen shrimp (because it does not compete with Nobashi shrimp, shrimp powder of Vietnam).
As for Ecuador, they only farm at a density of 10 pcs/m2, but thanks to their large area, their shrimp production will still reach 1 million tons in 2021. Therefore, in theory, this country's shrimp production can increase. to 1.5, even 2 million tons/year is not difficult (by raising the stocking density to 15-20 pcs/m2). In the past, this country's processing level was low due to a lack of labor, so they only sold whole shrimp to China and the US, but in the US market, consumers were less interested in whole products. In the past 2 years, thanks to importing labor from neighboring poor countries, they have started to process shrimp head-on and freeze them, so their market share in the US has also started to increase. The current position of this country is 3:3:3 for 3 major markets: Europe, America (mainly the US) and Asia. In particular, the US market is now twice that of Vietnam (18% compared to 9% of Vietnam), so this country alone and India account for about 60% of the market share in the US, and if you include Indonesia, the number This is up to 80%.
However, the competitive advantage of Vietnamese shrimp is not absent, that is, Vietnam is currently at a higher processing level, such as boiled shrimp for play, only Vietnam and Thailand can do it, but Thailand can do it. Lan is currently declining sharply due to a labor shortage and they no longer attach importance to the shrimp industry. The high-end segment is now almost exclusively in Vietnam. In Europe, Thailand lost tariff preferences, so Vietnam still dominates the high-end market segment, and so is Japan. Therefore, Vietnam has the condition to buy high-priced raw shrimp, so even though the farming cost is still high, farmers are still profitable.
Made by ATFOCO team
