Hannah Schlosstein is the new international marketing coordinator for Asia at the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). She earned a politics and sociology undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and then worked as a language teacher in rural Japan for two years. Schlosstein most recently worked as a clinical programs manager at the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) Hospital in Juneau. She started her position with ASMI in December 2023 and talked with SeafoodSource about her background and the new role.
SeafoodSource: Based on your bio, you seem to have been quite familiar with Japan before joining ASMI. Since you joined, have you learned anything about the other Asian markets that surprised you?
Schlosstein: Shortly after starting with the organization, I participated in the Vietnam trade mission ASMI coordinated in February of this year. I was surprised to see the level of familiarity with Alaska seafood and the high demand for our products like herring, keta, and pink salmon varieties in the consumer sector. Vietnam imports a diverse range of Alaska seafood, and [its] hunger [for Alaska products] continues to grow.
SeafoodSource: ASMI has been looking to other Asian markets and Latin America to make up for declines in exports to China. Do you see China rebounding now that Covid-19 lockdowns have eased, or will this strategy continue?
Schlosstein: Upon lifting the three-year-long pandemic restrictions, China saw an increase in gross domestic product by 4.5 percent year-over-year in Q1 2023. This indicates that China’s economy is rebounding; However, continued geopolitical tensions amid U.S.-China trade disputes and tariffs continue to inhibit this important market. ASMI will continue to diversify into new markets like Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Latin America because we do not want to recreate a scenario as we saw in 2018, when some of our products lost their only market overnight. We have a hard-working team in China and welcome growth in the China market, but we do not want to see a full return to the way the market was prior to 2018.
SeafoodSource: Could you give an overview of the trends in some of the newer Asian markets – those other than Japan and China – that ASMI is trying to develop? For example, what is the growth trend, and which products are in demand there?
Schlosstein: Since establishing a program in the Southeast Asia region in 2019, ASMI has seen several markets ...
Photo courtesy of Hannah Schlosstein/ASMI
