The 11th annual China Seafood Expo, with more than 15,000 visitors and exhibitors from 40 countries, confirmed its status as an international trading event, as well as a convenient entrance to the still-growing Chinese market.

“You have to be fairly deaf, dumb and blind, wherever you are in the world, if you do not realize this is a place you have to be in some way to know what's going on,” said Hans Petter Naes of the Norwegian Seafood Export Council.

The dozen national pavilions exhibiting this year included Canada's largest contingent ever, with eight individual companies and two organizations representing 15 Atlantic seafood producers, including lobster. “There's evidence all over the place of a much more Westernized culture. The more desire there is for Western products, the more we'll be able to sell,” said Jane Barnett, seafood specialist with Agriculture/Agri-Foods Canada.

Other new national exhibitors included eight companies each in the South Korean and Spanish pavilions, six with the Peruvian Export Promotion Agency PROMPEX, plus smaller displays from Malaysia, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere around the globe. Regulars like Norway, Iceland and the United Kingdom continue to host multi-company delegations.

All were planning to make their products part of the average 55 pounds of seafood the 1.3 billion Chinese eat per year, according to a new report on the China seafood industry produced by Glitnir, an Iceland bank that opened its first China branch in Shanghai in December. Most of that consumption, especially the high-value product, remains centered in China's modernized coastal cities.

Salmon has not progressed into the Korean menu far beyond hotel and restaurant buffets, where it is a standard menu item, but the Song Rim Fishery Co. is a regular exhibitor of a range of Norwegian farmed salmon products that it sells to several department stores. Its display at this year's Korean seafood show in Busan is shown here. PHOTO/Bob Tkacz/For the Journal

“In China, everybody doesn't have money to buy fresh fish, and they want fish,” Noormagi said.

Glitnir, banker to the seafood industry for more than a century, decided the time was right to add China to its four international branches. “There's not one certain incident that made us come here. It's more like a natural consequence of a development that's quite obvious to us,” said Haflidi Saevarsson, manager of the Shanghai branch.

Glitnir became the first financial institution to exhibit at the expo, not only to capture business opportunities, but because it has confidence in the Chinese banking system. “Chinese banking has taken leaps and bounds in the last two or three years. Very big evidence of that is recent flotations of Chinese banks, where large foreign banks are buying their way into Chinese banking,” Saevarsson said.

There was no United States pavilion, as such, at the expo, but spread among its 1,200 competitors, Trident Seafoods, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) and the Western United States Trade Association displayed their products in quadruple-booth sized pavilions. The three groups have all been regular exhibitors almost since the expo opened in 1996. Oregon's Astoria Pacific Seafoods and Bornstein Seafoods, of Bellingham, Wash., have also become regular booth-sharing exhibitors. Other Pacific Northwest producers send representatives without renting booth space. Ocean Beauty president Mark Palmer spent a day at the show this year.

ASMI chief Ray Riutta, always hesitant to criticize the industry he serves, hadn't reached a conclusion when asked if Alaskan companies are missing a marketing opportunity. “There's a natural cautiousness,” Riutta said, adding, “I think it's just a matter of time. You see Trident here. They see the potential.”

Although Trident has, for years, been processing fish in China to ship to other markets, it has only recently begun efforts to keep its product here. “We would like to sell products into the Chinese market, not necessarily retail,” said Doug Van Devanter, Trident's international vice president.

Because ASMI cannot sell products or promote specific companies, its effectiveness at the expo is hobbled by the absence of Alaskan traders in its booth. ASMI can hook a big fish buyer with its presentations of Alaska's prime products, but can't land the big deal.

“I try not to look at it as discouraging. I look at it as the time's not right,” said K.C. Dochtermann, ASMI international promotions director. “The small guys are very aggressive. They're making the sales,” he noted, adding that the overwhelming foreignness of China, and its less than fully transparent market operations remain daunting.

“Let's face facts. It's still a challenging market,” Dochtermann said. And not a cheap one. ASMI's pavilion cost $8,500. The total show budget for ASMI, including sample shipping, was almost $30,000, according to Dochtermann.

That challenge has not stopped others. The Southeast U.S. Trade Association also made its first appearance at this year's expo, offering shared pavilion space, interpreters, assistance paying for sample shipping and other support services to participating companies — all for $250.

With the help of an interpreter, Dean Stout, left, Georgia-based RDV Ventures' Asian sale director, responds to questions about its its Ramblin' Rooster sauces in mid-November in Busan, Korea. PHOTO/Bob Tkacz/For the Journal

Several traders said the China expo has become an international marketplace as well as a door to China opportunities. “When you go to Brussels you go to sell to Brussels. Here we sell to Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Europe and the U.S.,” said Pedro Veganzones Rojas, of the Chilean company Pesuaera Pacifico Austral Ltd.

Although wild Alaska salmon has had little success breaking into the Chinese market, another Chilean exhibitor expressed optimism that his country's farmed salmon would become a shelf staple like the Norwegian product.

“You can see the people think they can get a lot of things they could not get before and that includes salmon,” said Erwin Campos, regional sales manager of Pequera Chamanchaca.

Campos said Chilean salmon production will double in the next two or three years, and farmers are targeting China to avoid a world market glut.

Less than two weeks after the Chinese show, the fourth annual Busan International Seafood and Fisheries Exposition (BISFE) in Korea again failed to draw significant U.S. participation, despite moving its start date off of the Thanksgiving holiday. The schedule shift was requested by SUSTA to make it easier for U.S. companies to attend.

Alaska's Department of Commerce hosted booths at the first and second Busan expos, but hasn't participated since. ASMI, whose international promotions are largely directed by federal funding, gets no money to market in Korea.

“It's very poor this year ... I must be the only European here,” said Geoff Shewan, of Fresh Catch Ltd., a British mackerel and herring producer. Well-established in the Korean market and a four-year exhibitor at BISFE, Shewan has used the four-day event as a temporary headquarters where existing and potential customers can call at their convenience.

“The level of serious inquiries has been, let's say 80 percent down,” Shewan said, somewhat mystified by the lack of attendance. “The reason I come here is because it's the center of the fishing industry in Korea. It's the place the fish come in,” he added, while noting that the Danish, Irish and Norwegian seafood promotion agencies, all past participants, were absent this year.

Those who do attend are well cared for. In some cases, interpreters and even hotel rooms are provided gratis and exhibit space is expanded without charge. The U.S. Agricultural Trade Office paid for a single booth and got three more free, according to Stanley Phillips, the new ATO director in Seoul.

Shirley Estes, executive director of the Virginia Marine Products Board and representative of SUSTA is the only U.S. trade representative to attend all four Busan shows and she, too, was at a loss to explain its lack of growth.

SUSTA uses BISFE as part of larger promotional effort that commonly includes separate promotional events in Seoul or Busan. In the mutual back-scratch that is international trade, SUSTA also takes space at the expo as part of an ongoing campaign to convince the South Korean government to lower its import duty on croaker, an important export product for Atlantic coast states. SUSTA won a significant gain when the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (MOMAF) reduced the croaker tariff by 7 percent earlier this year, but the current tariff is 63 percent.

Despite the protectionist roadblock, Estes said her region is making progress. “The things we wanted to market, croaker, monkfish and ray, we feel we have done well on,” she said.

Paul Balthrop, representing the Florida Bureau of Seafood and Aquaculture Marketing, was even more upbeat and pleased with the interest in his state's “golden crab,” a cousin to the Australian “crystal crab.”

“The Korean market is wide open for American products,” Balthrop said after his first BISFE.

The lack of interest from Westerners didn't bother Asian and South Pacific businesses, nor did the intended focus on seafood. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the national marketing agency, was promoting the country's kiwi fruit, beef, wine and deer velvet as well as hoki, shark and green shell mussels.

None of BISFE's problems appear to have hurt Korea's seafood imports. Despite a decreasing rate of population growth expected to hit zero in the next decade, Korean seafood consumption remains among the highest in the world at 48.6 kilograms per person, according to the Korean Food Journal.

After import volume fell from almost 425,000 metric tons in 2003 to 406,435 in 2004, it rebounded to 411,878 metric tons last year, according to MOMAF's Statistical Yearbook. Import value has steadily risen to $1.19 billion, up from $1.28 billion last year.

Annual U.S. seafood sales to South Korea increased by 12 percent in 2005 and are expected to rise by more than 10 percent by the end of 2006 for a net value of $2.5 billion, according to the US Department of Agriculture's annual Global Agriculture Information Service report for South Korea, released Nov. 1.

Phillips, from the U.S. trade office may have hit upon BISFE's dilemma. “My impression is the bigger companies have made their contacts in Korea and are reaping the benefits of it. I guess there may be some smaller and midsize companies that could take advantage of the seafood show to make contacts in Korea and maybe just haven't heard about it,” he said.

The lone U.S. company that exhibited in Busan was not a seafood producer, but RDV Ventures Inc., a Georgia-based sauce manufacturer hoping its “Ramblin' Rooster” spicy dips and spreads will appeal to Korea's kimchee-based cuisine.