Pakistan seafood exports to China rise: Chinese fishing company

ISLAMABAD: The exports of Pakistani seafood from Gwadar to Chinese cities through Urumqi, China’s Xinjiang autonomous region has increased manifold owing to robust demand, Chen Baoliang, chairman of the board of Xinjiang Yu-Fei International Fishing Company said on Thursday.

Yu-Fei Marine Technology of China (Gwadar) Company is one of the largest fishing companies in the Gwadar port of Pakistan, according to China.org.cn.

"Since the company was established in 2017, we have been exporting an increasing quantity of seafood back to China," said Chen.

In the last two years, Yu-Fei imported 1,000 tonnes of seafood and sold them to cities in the Chinese mainland.

Now it takes 34 hours for lobsters and groupers from Pakistan to arrive in Xinjiang through air transport, instead of 25 days.

"When I visited Gwadar in 2016, I found that it had high-quality seafood but lacked proper facilities to process them," Chen said.

He invested 500 million yuan (about 73 million U.S.dollars) to build fishing, processing, refrigerated warehouses and established one of the largest seafood processing centers in Gwadar.

Yu-Fei is among a growing list of companies that bank on robust domestic demand in China to import seafood from Gwadar and sell to customers in Urumqi and Karamay, both in Xinjiang, and other cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

"As commercial relations expand, we will be able to create hundreds of more jobs for local Pakistanis and raise the income for local fishers," Chen said.