Foreign Business Got Interested in Auction Trade with Fish in Russia

By today China remains one of the main importers of Russian aquatic bioresources. About 400 thousand tons of fish and fish products, including for further processing, are supplied to Dalian only every year. There is also a big wholesale fish market presenting fish products from the whole world.

Director General of Far East Auction Fish House CJSC (FAHF), Sergey Lelyukhin, told Fidhnews correspondent that big amounts of fish- and sea- products are sold at the wholesale market in Dalian every day. They also sell Russian salmon, whereby humpback salmon gutted, HON, caught in July 2015 is sometimes sold at prices lower than wholesale process in Vladivostok (in spite of transportation costs). You can buy even sturgeon caviar freely and in big amounts, which, according to sellers, is “made of wild fish”, in cans with Russian labels. Though, Chinese sellers are not always ready to provide documents proving origin of these products. As well as cannot guarantee product quality.

There is also a kind of a “fish auction” in Dalian, where you can buy catches and products from vessels passing by right at a berth during live bidding. Yet a question of legitimacy of such trade is still open.

At the same time, according to Sergey Lelyukhin, meetings with heads of big import companies and fish product processing companies, marketing experts and governmental authorities were held during a business trip to Dalian; whereby Chinese parties every time were very interested in usage of maximally legal channels for sale of Russian fish product.

«“It turned out that China carefully follows implementation of the project of electronic auction fish bidding, which was implemented this summer at the trading floor of Saint Petersburg Exchange. Moreover, Chinese buyers are ready to participate in such auctions, all the more so transport logistics between our countries is well developed. So generally speaking the only issue left is polishing a technology of participation of foreign buyers in e-auctions and solution of some technical problems,” said head of FAFH.

One of the results of negotiations conducted has become making an agreement with a company that will represent interests of Far East Auction Fish House in China and Japan, said Sergey Lelyukhin.

A project that FAFH plans to present at Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in September got high marks of Chinese experts. This is about a possibility to create a center for auction and stock trading with aquatic bioresources and their derivative products at the internal and international markets, using capacities of “Free Port Vladivostok” and territories of priority development.

“It was marked during the meetings that creation of such complex for auction and stock trading with WBR is an important step towards development of relations between the two countries, and it perfectly fits into the policy of Russia and China, first of all in the light of measures being undertaken by our countries to prevent unlawful, unregulated and unregistered fisheries. In these conditions an international auction trading floor could become an additional filter for legalization of goods traffic,” noted Sergey Lelyukhin.

It is planned to discuss perspectives of cooperation in this direction in a more detail at Eastern Economic Forum. Several Chinese companies have already filed applications and covering letters to the Ministry for Development of Russian Far East. They underline that discussing this issue at the site of EEF will “broaden cooperation perspectives and take it to a new level”.

Sergey Lelyukhin says that Chinese partners were especially interested in trade at the stock trading floor with futures contracts for future supplies of fish products. “This is a very important moment from the point of view of organization and loading of production. And which is more important it will help to make the market more understandable and predictable, and to stabilize prices. Governmental support is also of great importance for the project: in this case foreign investors are ready to place money into its implementation and development of economics of Russian Far East already today – with these expectations foreign business heads to a coming Eastern Economic Forum”, said head of FAHF.

 Fishnews

Date: 27.08.2015 All news