Global Focus
ee Feigon motored down the
Mekong River in an armorplated Soviet-era speedboat on a
steamy May dawn. Destination:
Shrimp Processing Plant No. 65.
The captain of Feigon's boat was a
former Vietnamese general who
once led guerrilla raids on Ameri
can cruisers on the same waterway
during the Vietnam War. Now the
general ran the shrimp plant, and
his aim was to find a new source of
dollars for his currency-strapped
country.
Feigon's aim was to find a new
source of shrimp for Central Sea
way, a seafood importer in Northfield, 111.
"It was a very bizarre feeling,"
Feigon recalls of his trip down the
Mekong two years ago. "You could
easily imagine sniper fire coming
from the banks, and yet there was
all this stillness. Very bizarre."
Feigon is part of a growing num
ber of U.S. seafood buyers who are
cautiously exploring Vietnam for
trade opportunities. For 18 years,
the U.S. government had a trade
embargo on Vietnamese products.
But since the embargo was lifted
two years ago, seafood imports from
Vietnam have risen rapidly, more
than tripling from 1994 to 1995.
Shrimp is by far the No. 1 seafood
export from the Southeast Asian
country to the United States. But
buyers are also procuring small, yet
growing, amounts of octopus, tuna,
smelts, cuttlefish and other species.
Whether the imports will continue
to grow remains to be seen. Buyers
say there is a "stillness" in the Viet
namese market, but that the country
has the potential to erupt and
Greetings
*from
By Jack Beaudoin
Aging infrastructure
and outmoded technol
ogy have hindered
development of Viet
nam's seafood indus
try. However, fishing
grounds along the
country's 1,440 miles
of undeveloped coastlino could yield 1.4
million tons of fish
a year, Vietnamese
officials say.
become a growing force in seafood.
"Vietnam is going to happen," pre
dicts Sarah Hemphill, who has
worked in the seafood industry for
years and recently visited Vietnam
twice seeking business opportunities.
"In the near future, some very inter
esting things are going to happen."
An uncommon experience
Vietnam exported 5.9 million
pounds of seafood, valued at $19.7
million, in 1995. That easily more
than tripled the 1.9 million pounds
for 1994.
Economists have dubbed Vietnam
"Asia's next tiger" because of the
vast natural resources not yet
tapped by this country of about 70
million. That's especially true of the
fisheries. Steve Koplin of the
National Marine Fisheries Service
says that, barring disease, shrimp
imports could double annually for
the next couple of years. The vast
Mekong Delta and the Red and
Saigon rivers remain undeveloped,
without dams or heavy industry to
foul flows and hamper fish produc
tion. Vietnam's 1,440 miles of coast
line boast several deep-water
harbors on the South China Sea.
"Their capacity remains
unknown," says Hemphill. But, she
adds, Vietnamese officials have told
her their surveys show that a catch
With the trade embargo gone, seafood buyers are finding opportunities.
-gggsgjljggrgr
says of the barbecued dish, which
reminds him of squid steaks. "It
wouldn't surprise me if we started
to see more and more of this in tra
ditional fish markets."
N o w, t h o u g h , V i e t n a m e s e
seafood remains a secret that is
only gradually entering the main
stream fish market by word-ofmouth. Orca Bay, which has been
importing from Vietnam for about a
year, only jumped in after it got
wind of the product's availability in
Seattle's Asian markets.
"At that point I thought we
ought to look into it," Mercer says.
The company liked what it saw; it
now sends a Vietnamese employee
on regular trips home to visit pro
cessing plants and establish new
ties with processors.
goring effects of the Vietnam War,
chiefly, the trade embargo, have]
frozen Vietnam in time. But because
its natural resource* have lain
uptapped, economists predict it could
Asia's next tiger."
of 1.4 million tons a year is possi
ble. In addition to its traditional
fishing grounds, Vietnam has an
estimated 180,000 hectares suitable
and available for shrimp farms.
Despite the increasing exports and
potential, however, finding distinctive
Vietnamese fish in local restaurants or
seafood markets is a rarity, lew retail
ers actively promote the product as
being of Vietnamese origin. Some say
they don't need the
political backlash that
might accompany
such a marketing
approach, while others
contend that, in most
cases, there's just no
advantage to doing so.
That's particularly true
in the high-volume
species such as
shrimp.
For instance, farmraised tiger shrimp,
which account for
nearly 40 percent of
the weight and 80 percent of the
value of the imports, are usually sold
alongside their kin from Thailand,
India and Indonesia — indistin
guishable from each other. The same
is true of the generic whitefish fillet
varieties.
"We don't go out and inform peo
ple that this product is from Viet
nam," admits Jack Mercer of Orca
Bay Seafood, a Seattle processor and
distributor that has been importing
farm-raised whitefish fillets for more
than a year and sells them to restau
rants and other foodservice outlets.
"The country of origin is not as
important as the product itself."
But some niche markets cater to
customers who yearn for Vietnamese
seafood — the immigrants them
selves In major North American
cities with large Vietnamese popula
tions, Asian grocers have loaded up
on Vietnamese fish since the
embargo was lifted.
"We sell a lot of
Seafood exports
from Vietnam to
the United
States grew from
1.9 million pounds
In 1994 to nearly
6 million pounds
In 1995. The top
Imports, by
weight, are:
shrimp and cuttlefish
from Vietnam," says
Eddy Ka of the VietWah Trading Co., an
ethnic market in Seat
tle's Chinatown. 'The
Vietnamese really
miss their food. The
taste is the difference."
In fact, the Viet
namese are exporting
growing amounts of
tuna, eel, smelt, perch
and tilapia — all sta
ples of the republic's low-fat, highprotein diet. Dominating the
specialty exports to America is octo
pus; imports were 250,000 pounds
for the first nine months last year.
Once introduced to the cuisine,
Americans have become fans of some
of the Vietnamese species. Ron Chris
tian, a sales director for Port Chatham
Seafood distributors in Seattle,
acquired a taste for cuttlefish while
on a business trip to Vancouver.
"1 think it's pretty darn good," he
Product Weight
(In pounds)
Shrimp 2.9 mil.
Unspecified lish 1.0 mil.
Sauces derived
from fish
280,000
Octopus
244,000
Catfish
175,000
Clams
160.000
Flatfish
123,000
Eels
86,080
Tuna
83,000
Squid, cuttlefish 76,000
Anchovies
76,000
Smelts
57,000
Mackerel
34,000
Source: National Marine
Fisheries Senlce
On the verge?
Vietnam's exports are still small
compared to those of Asia's top
players. Its processing capacity has
been hamstrung by 'iging infra
structure, l%0s-cra technology and
a centrally planned economy. But
the greatest hurdle has been the lin
gering effects of the Vietnam War.
The trade embargo, one traveler
says, seemed to freeze Vietnam in
time. On the streets of I Ianoi, I lue
and Ho Chi Mirth City (formerly
Saigon), American pop music from
the war years still spills from the
doors of bars and discotheques.
Trucks powered by sputtering, 30year-old Caterpillar engines still
ply the major land routes that run
north and south along the
Annamese Cordillera mountain
chain. And only a few "model" pro
cessing plants along the coast can
boast of meeting health and safety
standards of western nations.
While Feigon says he's seen some
freezer trawlers, the great majority of
Vietnam's fishing fleet relies on boat
designs that have been around for
centuries. In the harbor at Cam
Rarth, one of Asia's deepest natural
ports, the brightly painted open
boats sporting dragon mastheads
seem more suited to a carnival
regatta than the fishing duties they
undertake. River fisherman often set
out for the day in their one-man tung
cluii, or woven basket boats.
"Vietnam is a tough place today,"
says Ron Hardy, a fish nutritionist
with NMFS who visited the country
in 1993. "There's a lot of poverty, a
lot of begging. The conditions were
staggering."
Hardy says most of the pnxressing
plants he saw were not up to the par
American buyers are used to.
"They're not yet equivalent to ours,
"Anyone thinking about importing should first go over and checkout
the plant they'll be dealing with. You've got to be able to kick the tires."
16 SeaFood Business Mayt]unel996
Global Focus
or those I've seen in Thailand and
Indonesia," he recalls. 'They were a
little ratty. But, with some money,
they could be fixed up."
"There are a lot of things over
there that people are still concerned
about," agrees Bob Tanskey of Key
Seafood Imports, an importer and
distributor in Perth Amboy, N.J.
"And I think it's important that any
one thinking about importing go
over there first and check out the
plant they'll be dealing with. You've
got to be able to kick the tires."
Getting over there is half the diffi
culty. Tanskey had to cancel a trip
when he had troubles getting the
necessary visas. Those who have
made it through, however, say the
experience has been well worth it.
"It's a beautiful, wonderful place,"
Hemphill says. "The people are morelike Americans than other Asians."
Far from being bitter toward
Americans, the Vietnamese told
Hemphill that U.S. seafood buyers
are welcome, if only to provide an
alternative to the Japanese, Korean
and Australian markets.
Hemphill says she was stunned at the
sight of the giant blue prawn, or macrobrachium rosenbergii, the Vietnamese
equivalent of lobster. "It stops your
heart, if s so beautiful," she says. "I can't
even begin to imagine what they'd fetdi
in a Tokyo or Hong Kong tank."
Hardy remembers best the floating
houses on the Mekong, where fish
farmers raise fish that look like a cross
between catfish and sturgeon. The
houses have trap doors in their living
rooms where farmers drop their feed
into the fish pens below.
"Just one of those places could pro
duce a surprising quantity — tons of
fish," Hardy says. "And the river's
constantly flowing, so it's a good
environment."
Vietnam's aquaculture potential is
enormous, Feigon adds. "You've got
the ideal physical conditions," he
explains with a hint of irony. "All the
mangrove swamps were blasted
away by American bombs, so you've
now got a great network of cleared
ponds. They're not even seeding the
ponds, and it's not very intensive, but
it makes for great product."
home in U.S. display cases, a lot of
questions will have to be answered.
Chief among them: will American
retailers ever be guaranteed a steady
supply of product?
If Vietnam's troubled history as a
trading partner is any guide, the
answer to that question is, at best, a
qualified "maybe." In its history of
trade with the West, Vietnam always
has shown itself to be of two minds:
one highly insular, eschewing trade
with foreigners, the other opportunis
tic, seeking to take advantage of the
seemingly insatiable Western appetite
for Asian goods.
The result has been a sorry chroni
cle of exploitation by countries like
France, the United States and the for
mer Soviet Union, followed by long,
bitter wars against foreign oppres
sors, followed, inevitably, by oppres
sion of a homegrown variety.
But today, seafood importers say
the country may be on the verge of
becoming a major trading partner
with the West. The most significant
move to open Vietnam to global
trade came not with the end of the
U.S. trade embargo but with the
communist government's recent pol
icy of doi moi, Vietnam's version of
economic and government reform.
The move toward private manage
ment has hit some snags of late, but
it is responsible for Vietnam's mem
bership in ASEAN (Association of
Southeast Asian Nations) and sev
eral other trade and development
organizations.
Under doi nwi, foreign investors
have been allowed to form partner
ships with Vietnamese enterprises. In
some Vietnamese processing plants,
Japanese importers have created
glass-enclosed "Japan rooms," where
products earmarked for export to
Tokyo are handled according to
Japanese norms. The Danes and Aus
tralians have also become major buy
ers of Vietnamese seafood.
Americans interested in buying
from the Vietnamese have picked up
a few pointers from those countries.
'The way you buy seafood in Viet
nam is to find a processing plant,
make a deal with them, find fisher
men to deliver to the plant and avoid
government fishing companies alto-
Overcoming the hurdles
Right now, Central Seaway,
Feigon's family company, is one of
the few major American importers
doing business with the Vietnamese.
But Feigon predicts that other compa
nies soon will come along and tap
into Vietnam as a major supply
source.
"There's no question it's going to
grow," he says of the variety of Viet
namese fisheries. "No question at all."
No one who's been to Vietnam and
sampled the seafood will dispute its
quality. But before that nation's tiger
shrimp, tilapia, tuna, cuttlefish and
giant blue prawns find a permanent
18 Seafood Business MaW/mm 1996
There are a few
freezer trawlers in the
Vietnamese fishing
fleet, shown below in
Haiphong Harbor, but
most of the boats are
based on ancient
designs. River
fishermen still set
out in woven basket
boats called
tung chat, above.
gether," advises Hemphill.
Mercer agrees. "You have to have
somebody on the inside, someone
who knows Vietnam," he says.
The other key lesson Americans
have learned is not to expect too
much. Fisheries investors looking to
make a big kill will probably fail. "It's
still fairly small scale," Hemphill says.
"You don't need a S30 million fishing
boat there; it will never be feasible for
Tyson Seafood. Vietnam could have a
small, happy coastal fisheries pro
gram — if they're careful."
"Vietnam is a natural area," Feigon
concurs. "The question is — and I
hope it won't happen — whether
they'll do what the Chinese did. They
just went full scale and built ponds
everywhere, and the intake for one
pond was the outfall of another. The
conditions were so stressful that, any
disease that hit, hit hard. A billion-dol
lar industry was lost in China, and it
still hasn't come back."
What road Vietnam takes depends
in part on the reception its products
find in the United States. Most experts
agree that Vietnam likely has the
capacity to meet increased demand
over the short term. But whether it
can sustain long-term growth without
depleting its resources remains to be
seen.
"We know the}''re processing prod
ucts now," says Tanskey. "We know
they have some pretty good plants.
Now it's just a matter of getting
there, and getting it back." SFB