Chinese premium retailer T11 Food Market is betting on high-end grocery buyers in the country to start buying more Alaskan pollock.
T11 was founded in 2018 by Derek Du, the founder of the 7Fresh supermarket chain, which was sold to JD.com in 2017. Heavily dependent on smart retail technology for its supply chain, it provides fresh groceries through an online platform and a handful of brick-and-mortar stores.
At the T11 Fresh Plaza Food Market in the basement of the Central Park Plaza building near Chaoyang Park, the supermarket’s own-brand, U.S.-sourced frozen Alaskan pollock is priced at CNY 49.90 (USD 6.98, EUR 6.48) per 500 grams and sells in the fridges alongside own-brand toothfish fillets priced at CNY 299 (USD 41.86, EUR 38.87) per 500 grams and chilled farmed grouper filets at CNY 99 (USD 13.80, EUR 12.80) per 500 grams.
Staff at T11 told SeafoodSource that sales of the pollock and toothfish have been strong, even as overall retail seafood sales remain sluggish. The T11 store’s location in the basement of a high-end office and residential Central Park complex is advantageous, they said. China’s retail sales rose 3.1 percent year over year in March, slowing from a 5.5 percent increase in the January to February period.
Exports of the category termed “Groundfish Alaska Pollock frozen” totaled 17,233 metric tons (MT) in 2023, down from 20,541 MT in 2022 but up from 11,273 MT in 2021.
Sam Friedman, a consultant with Alaska-based research consultancy McKinley Management, said it was too early to tell if there will be ...
