Vietnam’s swelling middle class consuming more premium seafood imports

Vietnam has transformed itself into a middle-income country, with its gross domestic product  growing 8.02 percent in 2022, the fastest annual pace since 1997.

According to a 2021 report from McKinsey Global Institute, 75 percent of Vietnam’s population of approximately 100 million people will spend at least USD 11.00 (EUR 10.20) a day by 2030, up from 40 percent in 2021 and less than 10 percent in 2000. Achieving that spending standard is considered a middle-class lifestyle by the U.K.-based analytical NGO World Data Lab, which recently identified Vietnam as having one of the fastest-growing middle classes in the world.

The number of people with a net worth of at least USD 1 million (EUR 925,000) is forecast to increase 59.2 percent to 114,807 by 2026, and those with at least USD 30 million (EUR 27.7 million) in assets will reach 1,551 by 2026, up from 1,234 in 2021, an annual wealth report released by U.K. property consultancy Knight Frank found.

As a result, demand for premium seafood products is rising, according to Norwegian Seafood Council Southeast Asia Director Asbjørn Warvik Rørtveit. Norway’s sales to Vietnam rose 16.5 percent year-on-year in 2022 to USD 259.8 million (EUR 240.2 million). Rørtveit told SeafoodSource Vietnam bought 55,207 metric tons (MT) of seafood from Norway in 2022, up 8 percent year-on-year, becoming the largest buyer of Norwegian seafood in Southeast Asia.

“Vietnam is a growing market for Norwegian salmon, mackerel, and live red king crab,” Rørtveit said. “It is very exciting to follow the development, and we have high expectations for growth, going forward.”

Rørtveit said of particular interest to NSC and the global seafood industry is the fact that Vietnam has one of the highest per capita rates of seafood consumption in in the world at 37 kilograms, with 86 percent of the population eating fish or other seafood products at least once a week.

Vietnam is already known as a seafood powerhouse, with its shrimp, pangasius, and tuna sales adding up to USD 11 billion (EUR 10.1 billion) in exports in 2022, ranking behind only China and Norway. But quietly, it has become a top-10 global seafood importer, hitting USD 2.7 billion (EUR 2.5 billion) in 2022, a 36.6 percent year-on-year increase. While a majority of its seafood imports are raw material for local processing plants that are then reexported, a growing volume of imported seafood is high-value, high-quality product being consumed domestically, with a growing quantity from the U.S., Canada, Norway, and Ireland.

U.S. seafood exports to Vietnam rose ... 

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