Shrimp prices have jumped in the US. (Photo: Stock File)

Shrimp prices rocket by over 40 pct

UNITED STATES
Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 03:40 (GMT + 9)

The price of nationally produced US shrimp has climbed by over 40 per cent to USD 6.20 per lb since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to pricing agency Urner Barry.

This trend reverses that of decades of falling prices. The international trade of shrimp is worth a yearly USD 15 billion.

Apart from the oil spill’s influence on prices, experts said, global production of farmed shrimp dropped in 2009 for the first time resulting from an outbreak of disease in Asia, bad weather and record high fishmeal feed prices.

US shrimp prices already grew by 15 per cent from the beginning of the 2010 to when the oil spill hit on April 20. Prices in Japan, where large shrimp are an important aspect of sushi, have escalated by 18 per cent in yen terms since the start of the year, reports Financial Times.

“For the first time in many, many years it looks quite positive [for prices],” said fisheries expert at the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Helga Josupeit.

She expected prices to remain high or jump as low supplies tighten the market. The new season’s harvest will arrive in the coming months.

Restaurants and food companies, fearing prices will continue to rocket, are hoarding supplies, executives said.

“People are guarding their inventories, buyers are trying to load up – it’s forcing an increase in the prices,” said Paul Brown, president and shrimp expert at Urner Barry.

Darden Restaurants -- owner of the US Red Lobster chain of seafood restaurants and one of the world’s largest buyers of seafood – is locked in contracts for almost all the supplies it requires for the next 12 months.

The US is the world’s largest consumer of shrimp. Although the country imports most of its shrimp from places such as Thailand, Indonesia, Ecuador and Vietnam, it acquires about an eighth of its total supply from the Gulf of Mexico.

But a third of the Gulf’s fishing areas are now off limits due to the spill.

James Clarkson of Clawson's 1905 Restaurant & Pub in Beaufort, North Carolina (NC), has begun importing Asian shrimp instead of purchasing the crustacean from the Gulf. The restaurant serves about 200 lb of shrimp a week, he said, and, since the spill, a 50-lb case has climbed by over 60 per cent in price, reports The Associated Press.

Owner of Grantsboro, NC-based seafood distributor Pamlico Packing Co Doug Cross said potential profits for shrimpers from "panic buying" could be fleeting if restaurants take the seafood off their menus to save money.

"It can fall off a cliff, crash," he said. "Restaurants can't afford up to so much for shrimp ... Somewhere there's a ceiling."

The boom of shrimp aquaculture over the past two decades made prices dive to their lowest levels ever late last year, turning shrimp into an affordable food.

Annual per capita consumption in the US rose from 1.4 lb in 1980 to 4.1 lb in 2008.

Related articles:

- Shrimp season opens in two states
- Gulf oil spill may run until August
- Boost in fish, shellfish exports to US expected

By Natalia Real
[email protected]
www.seafood.media

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