Mark Godfrey is an Irish journalist covering the agriculture and fisheries sectors in Asia, with a focus on China. Proficient in Mandarin, he has frequently traveled across China's fisheries and aquaculture regions and learned the inner workings of China's corporate world during a nearly three-year stint at the Financial Times' “China Confidential” publication. He has also reported widely across Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. He has educational certificates in agriculture and food science, as well as Mandarin.
Author Archive
A Chinese company has signed a cooperative agreement with the state government of Kedah, Malaysia, to build a fishery hub.
Fujian Straits Planning Institute and the Hua Min Digital Intelligence Technology Co. signed a cooperation agreement with Kedah state to build the Kedah State Marine and Fisheries Economic Zone. The project will involve port development and cold chain warehousing as well as aquaculture operations, according to a statement
… Read More
Irish fishing representatives and E.U. advisory councils are seeking to tie Norway’s access to the E.U. market – which buys around 70 percent of Norway’s farmed salmon annually – to negotiations over fishery quotas, arguing that the Norwegian seafood industry should not be able to enjoy such large access to the E.U. while also fishing unsustainably in European waters.
The Irish Fish Producers Organization (IFPO)
… Read More
A reopening of the Chinese market to Australian lobster imports may be imminent, according to Australia Federal Minister for Trade and Tourism Don Farrell.
Lobsters were one of several key export commodities to get caught up in a political dispute in 2020 when then-Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison questioned China’s handling of the outbreak of Covid-19 and suggested its origin in China be further investigated. Chinese trade
… Read More
The price of premium proteins, including seafood species such as croaker and salmon, have fallen in recent weeks in China.
Data collected from wholesale markets across China, reported by the China Agriculture Ministry, show weak price growth for key seafood species in line with a broader deterioration in protein prices.
The price for large yellow croaker in the first week of June at CNY 40.90 (USD 5.60, EUR 5.20) per kilo is down 3.2 percent on
… Read More
World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators pushing for a treaty to end harmful fishery subsidies around the globe are setting their sights the next WTO General Council meeting, set to begin 22 July.
Negotiators failed to reach an agreement at the WTO’s ministerial meeting in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, but on World Oceans Day on 6 June, the WTO released a video expressing optimism a deal might be reached during the July meeting.
“I
… Read More
Shanghai Kaichuang Marine International has acquired a final 30 percent stake in French Creek Seafood, a Canadian seafood trading firm headquartered in British Columbia, Canada.
Kaichuang Marine, a Shanghai-headquartered deep sea fishing company and seafood processor, will pay CAD 3.3 million (USD 2.4 million, EUR 2.2 million) for the stake through its wholly owned subsidiary Shanghai Kaichuang Deepsea Fisheries, it said in an announcement.
… Read More
More than 70 percent of the catch hauled in by China’s distant-water fishing fleet was shipped back to China for processing in 2022, according to a report from research consultancy Bee Data.
Some 2,551 Chinese distant-water vessels caught 2.32 million metric tons (MT) of seafood in 2022, up from 2.03 million MT in 2014, though the country’s distant-water catch accounted for only 3.3 percent of China’s overall seafood
… Read More
San José, Costa Rica-based insect protein firm ProNuvo has received a USD 2 million (EUR 1.8 million) investment from the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
The investment gives ProNuvo enough money to complete construction of an insect feed plant in Guápiles, Costa Rica, with a capacity of 4,000 metric tons per year.
IFC, a member of the World Bank, is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector
… Read More
