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Currently the destination for many of Sanford’s premium products, China represents nearly 15% of our revenue. But beyond our current business relationship we share an appreciation of beautiful seafood.
The seafood trade between China and New Zealand started early. In fact, the first ever whitebait exported from New Zealand was sent by Chinese miners in the early 1870s who caught and dried the fish before sending it back home.
But the relationship between Sanford and China didn’t begin until over 100 years later, in the early 1980s.
In 1981 and 1982, we began exporting ling to Hong Kong where it became the fish of choice on the Cathay Pacific airline for decades.
Our Trading partners in Hong Kong at Tailam and Eurasia Holdings – the latter of which we still trade with today – also began selling small amounts of our fish into mainland China, specifically to high-end restaurants in Shanghai.
But with the Quota Management System arriving in 1986, we finally began sending our fish directly into mainland China where it would be processed in their factories before being sent onwards to Europe.
It was this supply chain route that finally opened a direct line between Sanford and China.
In the early 2000s when the Chinese economy started to skyrocket, so did our exports into the country, with our native GreenshellTM mussels leading the way and then eventually other products following, like snapper and scampi, or as they’re nicknamed in China, “Antarctic baby lobsters”. Today, scampi has become so popular in China that our sales to the country now account 50% of all our scampi sales worldwide.
The most interesting part of our trading relationship over the years has been seeing the change, not only in our export offering, but in the tastes of the people who buy them. Traditionally a freshwater fish-loving country, we’ve seen a change in the seafood market in China as the availability of exports from overseas businesses like Sanford has increased. Just as in New Zealand we might set out a side of salmon for a special occasion, families in China are beginning to see imported fish and crustaceans as a point of pride, and a marker of a special meal. While we have only been trading with China for a relatively short time, it speaks to the strength of our relationship that there has been such a shift in the seafood dining culture in many parts of China.
In just a few decades we’ve gone from a few of our Ling making their way into China from Hong Kong in 1982, to directly supplying seafood to over 200 restaurants in Shanghai. It’s exciting to think of where Sanford’s trading partnership with China might go next.
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