Local shrimp exporters say they are no longer concerned about material shortage this year.

Chu Van An, deputy general director of Minh Phu Seafood Corp., said his firm planned to expand its cultivation area by 200 hectares every year from the current 1,200 hectares in Kien Giang, Vung Tau and Ca Mau.

The company also wants to increase its self-supplied input material to 70 percent of the processing demand in 2015, compared to 10 percent at present.

“Our company aims for sustainable development, through the establishment of a closed production and processing chain in order to better manage quality risks,” An said.

He said besides capital sources, good governance is necessary for the country’s leading seafood processors to efficiently invest in cultivation area.

Good farming management and farming area expansion help ensure the input quality for products exported to the markets that are anxious about the use of prohibited antibiotics in seafood cultivation.

According to An, Minh Phu Corp. produces some 12,800-13,000 tons of tiger prawns and white-legged shrimps per year, meeting only 10 percent of the demand for input materials of the company’s processing plants.

But he said there would be no material undersupply this year because in 2011, high export prices attracted many large firms to invest in shrimp breeding and shrimp farming.

Meanwhile, the seafood breed company Hung Vuong Ben Tre, established by Hung Vuong Joint Stock Company and Ben Tre Forestry and Aquaproduct Import-Export Company in 2011, plans to supply some 10 billion shrimp breeds to the market this year.

The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) also holds the view that local shrimp supply will be stable in 2012 because enterprises and farmers have engaged in white-legged shrimp cultivation as well as learned experience from the tiger prawn disease epidemic last year.

In addition to the local supply, processing enterprises also import raw materials from India and Indonesia.

Japan, the US, China and South Korea are expected to remain the main exporters of Vietnamese shrimps. The U.S. and Japan tend to boost import of value added products and reduce that of material products.

The purchasing power of the European Union market, which holds an 18 percent of the total export value of Vietnamese shrimps in 2011, is predicted to be impacted by the economic uncertainty and hardly recover in a short time.

In 2011, the total export value of Vietnamese shrimps amounted to US$2.39 billion, or a rise of 14 percent year-on-year, with tiger prawn exports reaching $1.43 billion.

Minh Phu Seafood Corp. is the country’s biggest exporter with $348 million earned last year, some 28 percent of which was from the American market.

(Source: Vietnamnet)