Brazil making seafood comeback after two frustrating years

The seafood sector in South America’s largest country, Brazil, is clawing back to profitability after a political crisis in the country seriously damaged the sector there.

Brazilian industry representatives at this year’s 2017 Seafood Expo Global said the sector was fully recovered from an economic shake-up in the country caused in large part by political turmoil due to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

Luzaldo Pscheidt, the commercial director of Costa Sul Pescados, one of the country’s largest importers and distributors of seafood, said his company’s sales were down 50 percent in 2015 and were flat in 2016, but that sales are up 20 percent through the first three months of 2017.

“The market is recovering now,” he said. “We believe the Brazilian economy will recover 100 percent and even keep growing.”

Cadu Villaça, the technical director of the Coletivo Nacional da Pesca e Aquiculture (Conepe), Brazil’s seafood trade group, said the country’s larger presence at the expo – 15 companies from Brazil exhibited this year – showed the country’s reemergence following two down years.

“Our quality is getting better, so we are reaching better markets, and getting better prices too,” he said. “Our recent movement in the market is an opportunity, because three years ago we were very concentrated in America and now it has changed – we are more diversified.”

For example, Brazilian lobster supplier Compex used to sell 80 percent of its product to the United States, but that number has dropped to 30 percent in the past five years. Now its main market is Asia, with 45 percent of its product destined for Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. An additional 25 percent of its lobster goes to Europe, and the company is rapidly expanding its sales to the Middle East, according to Paulo Gonçalves, an executive with the firm.

A fishery improvement project, coordinated through the nonprofit CeDePesca, has helped improve the reputation of Brazil’s lobster, as has a larger focus on improving quality and reducing the time the product spends at sea.

“Things are changing in Brazil,” Villaça said. “There is a movement towards quality, because we have seen when you have better quality, you have better prices, and when you have better prices, you need less biomass to make the same money. It’s more sustainable thinking.”

Villaça said his organization has also taken a more comprehensive and strategic approach toward branding.

“We’re working hard on branding and trying to develop our brand, and the market is responding to that,” he said. “It's good news that we’re hearing from customers they want our brand publicized on our products – they want Brazil identified as the country of origin on the [packaging].”

Goncalves said the seafood sector in Brazil was working together in a pre-competitive manner to build the country’s reputation for quality.

“I think there’s a better understanding that most important target is to establish a new production culture,” he said. “Selling is selling, and that will be competitive, but if we all have good raw material, we will all able to sell more.”

Pscheidt, of Costa Sul, said his company is predicting a renewed surge in the Brazilian economy soon, and was using its time at Seafood Expo Global to find new value-added products to introduce in Brazil as customers return to higher-valued seafood.

“Our focus here at the expo is not to export but more to find new products to bring to the Brazilian market,” he said. “We believe there is a great opportunity in the near future, and because we’re big enough that we have connections to the whole supermarket chain, if we find good products, we can take it to the whole country quickly.”

Jean Carlos Gonçalves, the business director for Cais do Atlantico, a Brazilian seafood import/expert firm, said his company had also registered a sizeable uptick in business in 2017 following a few tough years.

“We are noticing more interest for our products,” he said, particularly from France, Holland and Taiwan.

Even Brazil’s specialty products are attracting more interest, according to Bernardo and Cassiano Ricardo Fuck, of Bottarga Gold, a family-owned company that produces gourmet dried mullet roe.

While the company’s focus is in Italy, where bottarga is very popular, it has also found new markets in the U.S. and in Asia, though it has had to move slower than it preferred until recently.

“Brazil has a lot of mullet, and before making bottarga, we exported it to Taiwan in Europe. But eight years ago, we moved into processing our own bottarga, and two years ago we began selling internationally,” Bernardo said. “Finally, now it is picking up, and we are very excited that we are now going to see how big is the market for us.” 

The company’s strategy involves seeking out distributors to white-tablecloth restaurants, which they see as trendsetters. While bottarga is a premium product, Bottarga Gold can offer slightly lower prices than Italian firms, which can take advantage of the country’s reputation as the culinary epicenter for bottarga.

“We are in restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, all over Europe and now in South Korea,” Bernardo said. “And to get directly to consumers, we are now selling on Amazon.”

Costa Sul’s Pscheidt said plenty of challenges remain for Brazil’s seafood firms, including low seafood consumption per capita domestically, which he blamed on the economic troubles the country has been through recently. But he remains convinced the future is bright for the sector.

“We are in a good place now,” he said. “We have an increasingly wide range of products – both expensive products and cheaper products – and that will help us in our efforts to increase consumption around the country, which is very diverse economically, and internationally as well.”