Some Ecuadorian companies began exporting shrimp to Brazil in December 2017, with the first containers on their way, several sources told Undercurrent News.
Brazil liberalized the shrimp market to accept Ecuadorian products last year, although the start of Ecuadorian imports has been delayed by opposition of Brazilian shrimp producers as well as by bureaucratic procedures.
A source at a large Ecuadorian shrimp farmer and processor told Undercurrent that several Brazil-bound containers are en route.
“We have already exported; we shipped at the end of last month. They [the containers] arrive in a few weeks,” the source said, adding “by land to certain places is complicated”.
At least four Ecuadorian firms have already shipped containers, with a fifth one starting this week, according to another source.
In December, a source at a different large processor in Ecuador had told Undercurrent that the impending start of shipments to Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, might provide some support to falling prices.
However, Ecuadorian shrimp prices in January fell further, because of lower demand from China, according to other sources.
The Brazilian president made a speech saying the country had opened to Ecuador shrimp imports, the director of a processing company in Brazil told Undercurrent, although he admitted he did not know there was product on the way already.
Meanwhile, two large Thai companies have already “factories approved and are in process of presenting all documents and labels to enter the Brazilian market”, one source in Brazil told Undercurrent. “There are 30,000 metric tons [of shrimp] to grab,” he added, referring to the estimated gap between current shrimp supply and demand.
Shipments to Brazil started after almost a year of delay, during which the Brazilian shrimp producers’ lobby provided strong opposition to the market liberalization introduced by the government to meet the gap in local supply.
During this time, executives of the Ecuadorian national aquaculture chamber, together with the representatives of the country’s government, lobbied for speeding up the shrimp market liberalization in Brazil, which represents a strong growth opportunity for the sector.
“It has been teamwork over several years,” one source at one of the largest shrimp producers in Ecuador said.
The shrimp sector is an important generator of foreign exchange for Ecuador.
The national aquaculture chamber is the private entity that manages — with the different public institutions — the execution of actions that benefit the Ecuadorian aquaculture activity, in order to remain competitive internationally. The Ecuadorian aquaculture chamber said in a message on social media, adding it has been “achieving the opening of new markets for the Ecuadorian shrimp for 25 years”.
Itamar Rocha, the president of the Brazilian association of shrimp farmers, known as ABCC, told Undercurrent the association will continue to oppose market liberalization, obstructing Ecuadorian imports.
He pointed out that shrimp production in Brazil during 2018 was expected to rise to about 75,000-80,000t, up about 12% year-on-year, as measures to control white spot disease were being implemented.
He also said that Brazilian shrimp prices were competitive and that, in the future, Brazil will re-start exporting to the US.
