"The first time we came there were 20 companies (from China) but this year we have 281, so there has been very rapid growth," said Sun Yaling, deputy secretary general of the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA).
BARCELONA, Spain, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese exhibitors at the Seafood Expo Global in Spain this week are eager to showcase their newest delights to European seafood enthusiasts.
"We make frozen oyster products, and we want to sell the product to the whole of Europe," Wang Lingling, director of the Chinese Lighthouse Jellyfish company, told Xinhua at the fair held in the northeastern city of Barcelona, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
"Most people don't even know that in China we have these types of products, that's why we come here: we want to show the product to all the Europeans," Wang said, placing her hope on the event, which brought together 2,244 companies and attracted 35,000 buyers and distributors from around the world.
Along with Wang's company, nearly 300 Chinese firms participated in the event, with many voicing their eagerness to tap the European market.
This is the first time for Wang's company, based in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, to participate in the fair, through which it hopes to publicize their products and expand their market.
According to Fu Wenyang, general director of the Frosista Caviar company, based in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, "Europe is a very important market for us, since it represents 40 percent of all our production."
"We want to meet more and more new customers because this is an expanding market and the caviar from China is very good and increasingly popular, so we want to introduce Chinese caviar to more markets," he told Xinhua.
A total of 68 national and regional pavilions were present this year at the fair, where they showed off their latest innovations in frozen, fresh or preserved seafood, including innovations such as salmon sweets, shrimp lollipops and fish French fries.
"The first time we came there were 20 companies (from China) but this year we have 281, so there has been very rapid growth," said Sun Yaling, deputy secretary general of the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA), which has organized the Chinese pavilion at the fair for the past 18 years.
This year's edition, she added, has seen an increase in aquaculture and logistics technology companies, as well as large buyers from the retail, food service and distribution sectors.
"In the coming years, I believe that Chinese companies will continue to expand their business, not only in terms of export but also in import of seafood from all over the world," the deputy general director of Chinese company Hainan Excellence Import and Export Trading, Yun Tianwei, told Xinhua.
Although China is still a growing market in the sector, said the director of the company based in the southern island province of Hainan, the development of the Asian country "means that its consumers are increasingly looking for healthy foods such as seafood."
The international event brought together companies representing all sectors of the industry, from packaging materials and machinery, refrigeration equipment and supplies, to hygiene and quality control services.
The European Union (EU) is a world leader in the import and export of seafood in terms of net value, at more than 31 billion euros (33.17 billion U.S. dollars), and Spain is the bloc's leading importer ahead of Sweden and Denmark, according to data from the European Commission. ■
