Local seafood businesses will seek to expand their businesses by selling fish products via supermarket channels.— Photo vietnamnet

HA NOI (Biz Hub)— Local seafood businesses will seek to expand their businesses by selling fish products via supermarket channels, according to experts.

Nguyen Thi Thu Sac, deputy chairwoman of the Viet Nam Seafood Association (VASEP) and the head of the association for enterprises providing seafood for the domestic market, said at present there are 13 local seafood firms that have succeeded in selling their products through the Co.opMart supermarket system into the domestic market.

This year, four more seafood firms will join the supermarket system to sell seafood, she said.

Co.opMart officials said the businesses should offer new and special products to customers to compete with their rivals, according to the Thoi bao Kinh te Viet Nam (Vietnam Economic Times) newspaper.

The VASEP set up the association for enterprises providing seafood for the domestic market this year to create favourable conditions for local firms in promoting domestic seafood consumption, Sac said.

The club has attracted 30 local seafood firms to cooperate in improving the quality and quantity of seafood available for the domestic market.

However, experts of the fisheries industry say Vietnamese customers have well-worn habits in how they consume fresh seafood products that are difficult to change. The seafood firms, for instance, are finding it difficult in promoting frozen and processed seafood products.

Those frozen products have been mainly sold at supermarkets in large cities and provinces, and they are finding it difficult to enter traditional markets, they say. At traditional fish markets, traders find it difficult to invest in refrigeration equipment and warn that such extra costs would result in increases in the prices they sell fish at. — VNS