China opportunities explored
Senior Fisheries Analyst Alan Riwaka recently visited southern China to explore business opportunities for iwi fishing enterprises. Alan joined Chinese entrepreneur Joe Mok on a trip around restaurants and seafood businesses to look at marketing opportunities for New Zealand fisheries, particularly in relation to developmental fisheries such as goeducs, crabs and clams.
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| A worker at a Chinese seafood market takes orders from customers |
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| Goeducs on sale at a Chinese seafood market |
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| a restaurant kitchen that caters for hundreds of people at any one time |
“When you visit China, you very quickly get a good appreciation of what it means to have 1.3 billion people in a country. Where we may get 50 or 60 people through a restaurant on a busy night, their restaurants get hundreds and even thousands of people eating at any one time, especially in those areas where we visited,” Alan says.
“In China, there isn’t just a restaurant on the ground floor. Their restaurants are stories high, and the dishes that are served are extremely diverse and include a huge range of seafood,” he says. “This is all positive for promoting the clean and green seafood from Aotearoa.”
Over the past few years, Te Ohu Kaimoana has been investing in a number of development fisheries initiatives that include dredging surf clams, harvesting King Crabs, or discovering the flavours of goeducs (similar to a large tuatua. Goeducs live beneath the seabed and use a large siphon that protrudes through the surface to feed). While these fisheries are still in their developmental phases, it is hoped they will become sustainable and successful export operations.
“This visit was about looking for opportunities and to see what potential there is for iwi to build relationships with Chinese businesses,” Alan says. “We need to build better working relationships with our Chinese friends to ensure that our product is well marketed. We have a clean and green product and they have a quarter of the world’s populations, so there is clearly room for both of us to leverage off each other.”
As well as working through existing suppliers of seafood to the Chinese market, Alan says that other opportunities could be developed for directly marketing New Zealand seafood direct to Chinese consumers.
“More and more customers are becoming aware of the need for quality and recognise that New Zealand has a reputation for quality seafood. Marketing direct through New Zealand seafood outlets may provide huge possibilities for live and dried seafood products and the premier prices we can achieve by moving into that market.”
“It’s all about moving closer to the end user and if we can meet those sorts of challenges, then Maori seafood has a good chance of success in the Chinese market.”
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