April 25, 2013 — China’s major fish feed firms are bullish about 2013 thanks to a reported jump in fish prices as consumers switch to seafood due to the ongoing bird flu crisis.
Scares over the H7N9 virus have seen consumers replace chicken and pork with aquatic products, driving the price of fish up by 30 percent to 50 percent in prosperous Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces on the east coast and by 20 percent in the south of the country, according to Shanghai-based daily Dong Fang (Oriental) Daily. Separately, the ministry of agriculture in Beijing this week announced that volumes of fish sold rose 7 percent last week compared to the previous week.
That’s welcome news for investors in Guangdong Haid Group, which reported revenue of CNY 15.5 billion (USD 2.5 billion, EUR 1.9 billion) for 2012, up 29.02 percent year-over-year with net profit reaching CNY 450 billion (USD 73 billion, EUR 56 billion), up 31.45 percent over the previous year. The firm plans to increase its output capacity from 7.7 million tons in 2012 to 10 million tons this year and 13 million tons in 2014. Qilu Securities predicting that in 2013 Haid’s client base will increase by 40 percent to 50 percent while the sales of feeds will recover thanks to strong demand.
China’s No. 2 fish feed provider, Tongwei Co, announced revenue in 2012 of CNY 13.49 billion (USD 2.2 billion, EUR 1.7 billion), up 16.29 percent year-over-year, with net profit at CNY 96.97 million, up 14.64 percent year-over-year. Sales of feed in 2012 totaled 3.72 million tons, up 22.22 percent on the previous year. Fish feed sales hit 2.12 million tons, up 29.43 percent year-over-year, with a gross margin of 8.76 percent. Fish feed clearly is a more attractive margin earner for Tongwei than other business lines like seafood processing: revenues from processing at CNY 847 (USD 137, EUR 105) fell 5.45 percent year-over-year, with a gross margin of 0.75 percent.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com