Resumption of promotions coming to revive US shrimp consumption

U.S. shrimp imports will decline in 2022 for the second straight year, but that’s not due to lack of overall seafood demand, according to Rich Products Consumer Brands Division Senior Vice President Shannon Gilreath.

Speaking at the National Fisheries Institute Global Seafood Market Conference on 17 January in La Quinta, California, U.S.A., Gilreath said a softening of the U.S. shrimp market in 2022 was a result of rising prices due to inflationary impacts.

“The processors, manufacturers, and others throughout the supply chain have really gotten squeezed through all of this, and its challenging to pass on all the costs that are being realized from the time they buy the shrimp, process, and deliver to the shelf,” Gilreath said. “Overall, not bad news for shrimp. The category is growing, it's healthy, and it's experienced significant growth through the pandemic.”

Prices for everything from flour to soybean oil to corrugated cardboard to energy and cold storage have raised the overall cost of shrimp to the consumer, and as a result, fewer households bought shrimp year-over-year in 2022, existing buyers made fewer trips to buy shrimp, and buyers purchased fewer units of shrimp per shopping trip, according to Nielson data shared by Gilreath.

After two years of growth, dollars spent on frozen seafood in the U.S. were flat in 2022 at USD 8 billion (EUR 7.4 billion). Shrimp represented 48 percent of the category’s sales but saw the highest absolute dollar decline in 2022, down 3.6 percent or USD 144 million (EUR 132.6 million).

But Gilreath said U.S. shrimp consumption has not hit a ceiling, but rather ...

Photo courtesy of Rich Products