China boosting sales of APO fillets to Russia

In the year 2006 Russian importers purchased 14,700 metric tons of frozen Alaska pollock fillets (HSC 0304 0 850) from China at a total cost of ca.30 million USD. The increase on the previous year 2005 amounted to 8000 tonnes worth 8 million USD and as compared to 2004 the overall expenses of Russian importers for purchases of Chinese APO fillets grew more than nine times, while the volume of supplies grew approximately 5.6-fold. Evidently, the reason behind the difference in the rate of rise of value and volume was in faster growing prices per kilo of the products.

Increase

Analysis of Russia's seafood import from China has disclosed positive trends for ten commodity positions with largest volumes and value. More specifically, as compared to previous year in 2006 China boosted its sales to Russia for the following product categories:

• 0304 20 850 - frozen fillets of Alaska pollock, sales jumped by 135% in value and 115% in volume;
• 0307 49 990 - frozen squid except for Loligo and Ommastrephes, the sales value rose by 27%, while volumes dropped slightly by 0.3%;
• 0305 59 900 - dried, salted or not, but not smoked fish, sales jumped by 118% in value and 74% in volume;
• 1604 19 989 - fish fillets raw, in batter or breaded, increase by 348% in value and 184% in volume;
• 0304 20 950 - frozen fillets of hoki, increase by 203% in value and 143% in volume;
• 0304 20 580 - frozen fillets of hake, increase by 3422% in value and 2732% in volume;
• 0307 49 910 - frozen squid Loligo and Ommastrephes, increase by 694% in value and 1315% in volume.

As it can be viewed from the above percents of increases, the largest rise was recorded for frozen fillets of hake, though the volume of hake supplies and their value were much behind the leading product categories. More specifically, in 2006 Russia purchased only 1416 tonnes of hake fillets at a total cost of more than 3 million USD thus bringing the product category only to the ninth place in Russia's top-10 of seafood imports from China. This list of ten leading product categories imported from China was headed by frozen fillets of Alaska pollock with 14,700 tonnes worth nearly 30 million USD.

In 2006 the seventh place in the list of Russia's top-10 seafood import articles from China was taken by frozen fillets of freshwater fish (HSC 0304 20 199), while in 2005 and 2004 Russia did not purchase such fillets from China at all.

Decreases

A considerable decrease was recorded in the dynamics of Chinese supplies of surimi-based ready-to-eat products with the volume and value coming down to 11,800 tonnes worth 12.5 million USD, correspondingly 44% and 45% down on 2005.

As compared to 2004, the volumes of Chinese exports of surimi-based products to Russia dropped by 4700 tonnes, while their total value somewhat increased evidently due to rising prices per product unit by 44% from 0.74 USD per kilo in 2004 to 2.06 USD in 2006.

As for 2005, the above product category (HSC 1604 20 050 - ready-to-eat products from surimi) won the first place in the structure of Chinese seafood export to Russia. Then, the volumes of supplies and their value (21,000 tonnes and 22.8 million USD) surpassed the leader of 2006 with the volume of 6800 tonnes and value of 12.7 million USD. However, in 2006 due to a considerable rise of frozen APO fillets supplies against a large decrease of supplies of surimi-based products the import article descended from the first to the fourth place in the structure of the Chinese seafood export to Russia.