Australia catches seafood exporters’ eye

HA NOI (VNS)— Australia offered untapped opportunities for Vietnamese seafood exporters, said chief representative of the Viet Nam Trade Office in Australia, Nguyen Bao.

Bao urged domestic firms to better ensure hygiene and food safety, bolster trade promotion activities and concentrate on advertising their products in an attempt to boost exports to Australia.

Expert enterprises should promote exports of finished and semi-finished seafood products as Australian consumers did not want to spend a lot of time on processing, he said.

“This would also help firms diversify export products and add value to every single unit of product in a bid to effectively penetrate the market,” he stressed.

The Australian Seafood Importers Association chairman Norman Grant emphasised the importance of further advertising the quality of Vietnamese seafood in Australia.

False information about Vietnamese seafood resulted in a modest presence of many quality Vietnamese seafood products on the tables of Australian households, he said.

According to statistics from the Viet Nam Association for Seafood Exporters and Producer, Viet Nam shipped US$184 million worth of seafood to Australia in 2012, up 14.2 per cent year-on-year.

This made Australia the seventh largest importer of Vietnamese seafood.

The association predicted that Australia remained one of the bright spots for the country’s seafood exports in 2013. — VNS