2010/748 Investigating markets for seafood in East Asia

By Richard Stevens

With the Australian dollar at historic highs, the need to help industry to determine which markets can give the best return on members' investment in time to investigate them and create some demand for products from Western Australia is critical. Asia is still by far the largest market for Western Australian seafood but finding one Expo that will attract buyers from major importers such as China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea has not been possible until now. In 2010 The Western Australian Fishing Industry Council (WAFIC) approved a three-year investment in the Asian Seafood Expo, commencing with the first Expo in September 2010. As this was the first genuinely all Asian Expo, and the first Expo in Asia that WAFIC has attended since the 2002 Tokyo Seafood Show, WAFIC needed market intelligence and sought and received co-investment from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) and Australian Seafood Cooperative Research Centre (CRC). This investment allowed a professional market survey to be conducted carried out by the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Queensland, which was carrying out similar in-country research for the Abalone Council of Australia in China.