March 13, 2007

Foreign retailers hope to cash in on China's taste for seafood

Wal-Mart and other global retailers hope to take advantage of China's increasing per-capita consumption of seafood by marketing convenience seafood products at superstores they are building.

China, the world's largest seafood producer, still relies largely on local sources of seafood due to lack of refrigeration trucks and facilities in many parts of the country.

Seeing the huge potential for growth, retailers are hoping to cash in as incomes of the local population rise and they acquire a taste for higher end seafood such as imported lobster, salmon and cod.

Currently, Chinese consumers buy only 10 percent of their food from supermarkets. This is far removed from the situation in the US, where 90 percent are bought from supermarkets.

One reason for this is the lack of refrigeration facilities, which has forced China to rely on live and fresh seafood from local sources.