Recently, tuna’s raw material is in a significant shortage, especially in Vietnam. Vietnam is always one of the biggest tuna exporting countries. Ocean Treasure is an exporter and supplier of yellowfin tuna from China. Will the raw material shortage bring a significant increase for yellowfin tuna products? Check Ocean Treasure information.
Yellowfin tuna’s price had a sharp drop in 2020 because of the low demand in the pandemic period from its leading markets: the USA, Japan, South America, and the EU. It had a sharp drop by 12% in four months. The demand was deficient from April till October 2020, and the price stayed at a low level.
Catering and supermarket supply chain recover, price recovers too.
Due to the catering and supermarket supply recovery after October 2020, the demand is yellowfin tuna returns. Because the demand for yellowfin tuna increased, the price started to grow from the bottom level. Meanwhile, the freight cost was at a historically high level. From October 2020, the price increased like stairs. Every month, the price increase by 10 cents per kg gradually.
Price increased, demand increased, processing plants expand the import volume.
Because of the low demand in 2020, the catch volume decreased. This situation made the stock condition hard to fix the increasing demand afterward.
Vietnam has one of the biggest yellowfin tuna processing industries. The high demand for yellowfin tuna accelerates the consumption of the yellowfin tuna stock. Since the catching in Vietnam is low than last year, Vietnam expands the import of raw material mainly in Indonesia and Indian, but mainly from Indonesia. Why Indonesia? Because Indonesia’s yellowfin tuna is sea frozen while India can only offer land-frozen one. Sea-frozen raw material has better freshness.
Many reasons caused the price to keep increasing recently
- Lack of raw material in Indonesia
The raw material situation in Indonesia is terrible, and it affects the supply of raw material to Vietnam.
- India’s pandemic situation
Recently, the shortage of yellowfin tuna is worse. India suffers from the pandemic, and the freight cost from India increased way too much, which increases the cost of the raw material. In addition, the logistic efficiency is lower than before.
After the SUEZ canal incident that caused PA bag prices to rise 7%, CO increased by 10% in Vietnam. As we all know, most yellowfin tuna products will do the CO-treatment.
- The demand recovers in the EU
As we mentioned before, the USA, Japan, South America, and the European Union. The EU recovery brings high demand to yellowfin tuna and the price increase, which likely reflects last year the USA recovery brought a significant increase.
All these factors show a signal of an increase in the price of yellowfin tuna. Compared to the beginning of the last year’s price level, the price right now is still low. Compared to other seafood’s price trend, yellowfin tuna’s price still has a big potential to increase.
