Severe but opposite weather conditions — drought then flooding — in eastern China have decimated crayfish supplies reaching the peeling and freezing factories. As a result, exports to Europe and the United States will be at their lowest level for 20 years.
So says Alain Schmit, managing director of Crawfresh Import SA of Luxembourg, Europe’s largest importer of the freshwater crustacean (Procambarus clarkii), who has been visiting China during the recent harvest season.
“After travelling in four Chinese provinces — Hubei, Anhui, Jiangxi and Jiangsu,” he said, “my conclusion is that there has not just been the worst dryness for 70 years until the end of May, and the worst flooding for 50 years in June, but also the worst situation in crayfish production for the last 20 years.
“The total production for crayfish will reach about 30 to 35 percent compared to last year, whereas last year it was a decrease of 13 percent compared to 2009. This has nothing to do with the growing of the crayfish, but just with the weather conditions which were not good for the crayfish.”
In 2010, it was the unusually cold weather in China in April that reduced the harvest. Temperatures of 9 degrees C instead of the 30 degrees C experienced in April 2009 meant that crayfish failed to appear and therefore couldn’t be caught.
The main crayfish product exported from China is the cooked and peeled tail. The EU is the major market, although there are also exports of tails with “fat” — the meat between the head and the body of the animal, which Europeans don’t like — to the United States. Sweden also imports crayfish from China, but Swedish importers generally want the whole animal.
Crawfresh buys from EU approved peeling plants in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei — where the company has a joint venture with a new crayfish processing factory — and Xiamen provinces. Schmidt visits the factories regularly and the company also maintains an office in Nanjing where it employs three Chinese quality controllers, plus a QC person from Europe is based there for eight to nine months in order “to help our partners to increase the quality and to educate them about peeling.”
There are 49 crayfish factories in China with an EU export permit, but of these only 25 to 27 are actively selling to Europe, said Schmidt. Containers of frozen products, mostly tails, are shipped mainly to the Netherlands from where Crawfresh delvers to buyers in the Netherlands itself, Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Italy. France is the main market for crayfish tails in Europe, according to Schmidt, but Germany has the most growth potential, he said.
But buyers this year are going to be short of supplies. “In 2010 there was an export of 9,269 tons of [crayfish] tails to Europe,” said Schmidt. “On present calculations, this year exports to Europe will be about 3,000 tons. If the weather conditions, which have improved, continue to be good perhaps it can increase to 4,000 tons.” About 500 to 700 tons of tails with fat will be exported to the U.S.”
The crayfish harvesting season in China has now ended. “Most factories have stopped [processing],” said Schmidt, “just a few small ones are still producing.
“The price compared to last season has jumped from USD 8 per kilogram duty unpaid, to USD 14 this year,” he continued. “There are still some products being shipped to Europe, but these are products which were frozen for the U.S. market but have been thawed and the fat removed, before being re-frozen.
“For the next year, I don’t see big problems for the quantity of crayfish available. The fishery is recovering very fast. The only problem there could be for exports to Europe and the USA is that the domestic market is growing very fast,” said Schmidt. “Whereas it was live crayfish which were sold in Chinese restaurants, frozen tails are now being sold in supermarkets in Beijing. If this is successful, then they will be sold in supermarkets all round China and there will be very little left for export.”
