On Monday, Undercurrent News reported that US pollock surimi exports to South Korea had boomed this year, with the country surpassing Japan as the top export market for the first time in at least a decade.
The same figures suggested exports to Japan had fallen 19% in the first seven months of the year.
However, what these figures reflect is not higher demand in South Korea, but instead much later sales to Japanese buyers as a result of this year’s slow surimi market, said Guenneugues.
With higher inventories this year, coupled with a weak yen and falling prices, Japanese buyers have remained more cautious with their purchases of US pollock surimi, a process that has seen pollock surimi prices drop 40% in US dollar price.
Faced with this, US processors, forced to ship out their product from Dutch Harbor (Alaska), moved the inventory to the South Korean port of Busan until the contracts with Japan were confirmed, said Guenneugues. The main reason is that Busan offers cheaper transportation and storage than Japan.
“Last year, [when Japan's inventories were far lower], the contracts were done in January, so the product moved directly to Japan,” said Guenneugues.
Import figures from Japan, listed in a presentation given by Nippon Suisan Kaisha (Nissui) at the Japan surimi forum, back this up.
These show Japan imported 40,604 metric tons of pollock surimi from the US in the first half of 2013, barely down from last year’s 41,291t.
This picture is in strong contrast with that given by the US export figures, which suggested that exports to Japan had fallen from 40,675t to 32,795t in the first seven months of the year, as they did not take into accounts sales via Busan.
The same export figures from the US showed South Korea purchased 39,455t of US surimi pollock from January to July 2013, compared to 23,970t in the same period last year.
While Japan’s imports of US surimi pollock have remained stable, its surimi imports from Thailand have taken a strong hit, falling by 8,000t to 18,294t.
This confirms the trend outlined by Guenneugues, that tropical surimi imports have taken a strong hit this year, as countries importing both pollock and tropical surimi (such as Japan, the EU/Russia, and South Korea) have shifted the balance in favour of pollock surimi this year, due to the lower prices.
The same presentation by Nissui shows that competition in Japan is intensifying, as overall spending by consumers is going down.
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