"Noble" seafood competes to flood the market, some are as cheap as vegetables

Abalone is sold on the "online market" at super cheap prices.

At noon, instead of eating out like her colleagues at the same company, Ms. Ha Thi Lan (in Thai Thinh, Dong Da, Hanoi ) brought out a box of porridge prepared at home to heat up and eat. She boasted: "Today I ate 'noble' abalone porridge, but at a super cheap price."

The reason Ms. Lan said that is because in the past, abalone was a very expensive seafood, usually only for the nobility and the rich. But now, she can easily buy fresh abalone for just over 10,000 VND/each. This price is equal to a bunch of vegetables bought at the market.

Therefore, people with an income of around 20 million VND/month like Ms. Lan are confident in buying this "noble" seafood to eat regularly.

A week ago, she made her own Australian lobster spring rolls when she bought this seafood for 300,000 VND/kg with the tail intact. “Normally, seafood stores sell live Australian lobsters for about 1.7 million VND/kg. Now, imported frozen Australian lobster tails are flooding the online market at incredibly cheap prices,” she said.

In fact, abalone, Australian lobster or Shanghai hairy crab are classified as high-end seafood and are often referred to as “aristocratic” seafood because of their high prices. However, in recent days, these types of seafood have been flooding the market in large quantities, and their prices have become increasingly affordable.

For example, Australian lobster tails with 4-5 tails/kg are being sold for 300,000-340,000 VND/kg, small live abalone costs from 10,000-15,000 VND/each. Or, Shanghai hairy crabs, instead of costing from several hundred thousand to nearly 1 million VND/each as before, are now commonly sold for 50,000-70,000 VND/each, 100-140g/each.

Ms. Vu Huyen (an online agricultural product seller in Cau Giay, Hanoi) said that on this occasion, she regularly makes two trips a week to deliver Australian lobster tails to customers' orders.

She said that the main warehouse for frozen Australian lobster tail containers. The selling price is only 340,000 VND/kg for the Vip type with 3-4 tails/kg.

"At first, I found it hard to believe the cheap price. But they gave me quality inspection papers so I imported it to sell," she said.

According to her, Australian lobsters, if bought whole, cost millions of dong, but the head is very heavy and has little meat. On this occasion, there are products with whole tails, lots of meat, and cheap prices, so customers order a lot. However, she admits that the quality of frozen products cannot be as delicious as fresh products, but in return, the price is cheaper than whole products.

Therefore, each trip, Ms. Huyen has to buy 40-50kg of Australian lobster tails to meet the orders of customers. Some people only buy 1kg, while others buy up to 5kg at a time.

Australian lobster tails hit the market at incredibly low prices

On the online market with more than 300,000 members participating in buying and selling, Ms. Ngo Phuong Lien regularly posts in the morning and afternoon to sell Shanghai hairy crabs and abalone. She has maintained this job for more than 2 months now.

The common point of the seafood products that Ms. Lien is selling is that they are all very cheap. She cited that Shanghai hairy crabs with 6-7 eggs/kg cost only 490,000 VND/kg; and abalone costs 250,000 VND/kg, which is only 12,500 VND/each.

She recalled that just a few years ago, abalone and hairy crab were still in the high-end seafood segment. In particular, when hairy crab first appeared on the Vietnamese market, it cost millions of dong, and customers who wanted to buy it had to “line up”.

Now, the goods are flooding the market in large quantities, so the prices are getting lower and lower, from expensive to affordable. Accordingly, she can sell dozens of kilos of hairy crabs and hundreds of tons of abalones a day. Notably, not only in Hanoi but also in neighboring provinces, there are many customers buying food.

Explaining why the price of “noble” seafood is getting cheaper, Ms. Lien said that according to the market law, the more supply, the cheaper the price and vice versa. For example, in the past, abalone was caught naturally, the goods were scarce so the price was super expensive. Now there are many areas where abalone is farmed with large output, the price is also cheaper.

In addition, instead of only making high-end products, people also proactively cultivate many different types to serve customers in different segments. Therefore, with abalone or hairy crab, besides the expensive ones, there are also "cheap" products that are sold on the online market today, Ms. Lien said.

TB (according to Vietnamnet)

Source: https://baohaiduong.vn/hai-san-quy-toc-dua-nhau-do-bo-cho-co-loai-gia-re-nhu-rau-391391.html