KOLKATA:
Hosting 370 business meets that promise a huge leap in the marine products, the India International Seafood Show (IISS) in the city concluded on Friday, bolstering the government’s aim to double seafood exports by 2025 amid warm responses from buyers and exporters at the three-day event.
The buyers totalled 28, represented by 21 companies from 11 countries. As many as 82 Indian exporters benefited from the meets, according to the three-day event’s organisers Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) and Seafood Exporters Association of India.
“Both buyers and exporters keenly participated in IISS 2023. There was widespread appreciation over our efforts to revive the country’s marine exports in the post-pandemic era,” MPEDA Chairman, D.V. Swamy said about the February 15-17 event which had 3,000 delegates including 100 Overseas delegates and more than 7500 business visitors from within the country and abroad.
India’s renewed seafood exports target will earn 14 billion US dollars by 2025 as against $7.76 billion in 2021-22, Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Anupriya Patel said at the IISS held in Biswa Bangla Convention Centre.
The concluding evening saw awards distributed to three categories of stalls. Vietnamese firm Anh Phat won the prize for the best overseas stall, while Spain’s Palinox was declared the second-best in the category. Among the domestic, Wan Hai Lines won the best stall, followed by Grasim Industries. In the category of exporters, the top honour went to KNC Agro, while SA Exports came second.
The event, which hosted an expo featuring 350 stalls spread over 7,000 square metres, showcased a wide range of products based on automated and IT-aided technology and energy-efficient systems for value addition.
The MPEDA Chairman said the IISS facilitated various industry stakeholders to ink business deals, forge new contacts, leverage market linkages and introduce new technologies as well as products to the global market. “The role of the states is crucial in the growth of our seafood sector,” he said at the event, which held technical sessions on developments in the seafood industry besides facilitating manufacturers and suppliers to display and secure business deals for their processing machinery, packaging systems, processing ingredients and cold-chain systems.
The 23rd IISS lent further momentum to the government’s attempt to regain buoyancy in seafood exports in the post-pandemic era, with the MPEDA set to hold a conference on the harmonisation of regulations for seafood among G-20 countries. This will be in Delhi in the second half of this year. Further, the national capital will host a ‘Fish Food Festival’, inviting ambassadors from the top 20 markets (including G20 countries) of marine products.
Experts at IISS stressed the need for India to tap its “immense” scope for value-added marine products even as the country is showing positive signs of diversification that are guarding it against “too much” direct competition. India must tap more of its domestic market for shrimps through improved cold-chain infrastructure so as to absorb fluctuations in the international trade of the commodity owing to stiff competition from Latin America and South-East Asia, they added, referring chiefly to Ecuador and Indonesia that are “dumping” their seafood items into the US market at far cheaper prices.
