(seafood.vasep.com.vn) As of August 15, 2021, the total value of Vietnam's tuna exports to the Israeli market increased by 34% over the same period in 2020, reaching nearly 25 million USD, accounting for 5 .6% of total tuna export value. Israel continues to be Vietnam's third largest single tuna export market after the US and Italy.
In 2019, after two people were hospitalized with food poisoning from eating tuna, many Israeli consumers turned away from tuna products. This has led to a decline in sales of tuna in Israel and affected Israel's imports of processed and canned tuna. This trend has also caused Vietnam's tuna exports to decline continuously in the 2018-2020 period. But from the end of 2020 until now, tuna exports to this market have tended to recover. At one point, tuna exports to the Israeli market increased by 2.5 times compared to the same period in 2020, but still have not returned to the level of the same period in 2018.
Compared to the same period in 2020, Vietnam's exports of tuna products increased over the same period. In which, frozen tuna meat/fillet of Vietnam with HS code 03048700 is still the main export product to this market, accounting for 47% of total export value. The average export price of products to the Israeli market in the first seven months of this year stood at $5,464 per ton.
According to statistics of the World Trade Center (ITC), in the first 6 months of 2021, Vietnam surpassed Thailand to become the largest tuna supplier to Israel, accounting for nearly 31% of the total tuna import value from this country. Notably, in the first half of this year, while Israel's tuna imports from most sources decreased, imports from Vietnam increased.
Currently, there are 8 Vietnamese enterprises exporting tuna to the Israeli market, the largest of which are TUNA VIETNAM, BIDIFISCO and HAVUCO.