Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh, General Director of Utxi Aquatic Products Processing Corporation (Soc Trang) said its plants have the processing capacity of 100 MT per day but now only 2 - 3 MT. Currently Soc Trang has 400 ha of black tiger shrimp that are being harvested.
Not only in Soc Trang but the shortage of raw shrimp also occurred in Ca Mau and Bac Lieu – the major shrimp farming zones in the Mekong Delta. Ca Mau Foods and Fishery Export JSC is in need of about 4,000 MT of raw shrimp, however the company only purchases more than 1,000 MT at this time.
According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), 25 shrimp processing plants in Soc Trang province are operating below 50 percent of capacity. The lack of raw shrimp may last through March 2011. The immediate solution of enterprises is to increase to import raw shrimp, organize the purchase network in neighbor areas.
VASEP said, there were many reasons that led to the lack of raw shrimp, but the biggest was the areas of farming in 2010 down about 5.2 percent compared to 2009. Meanwhile, processors continuously expanded their capacity and built more plants. Dr. Nguyen Thanh Tung, Deputy Director of Vietnam Institute of Fisheries Economics and Planning said, in 2008, the Mekong Delta had 189 frozen seafood processing plants with the designed capacity of 1.2 million MT per year, up 2.7 times compared to 2003.