MARKET OPPORTUNITY

The USA is the world's most valuable individual agrifood market (with total annual food and beverage expenditure of over US$1 trillion (2002), with average per capita expenditure of US$3,488 per annum (2002), and a population of 300 million by 2006. One of the leading agrifood items over CY1995-2005 was fish/ crustaceans & molluscs (US$9.9 billion in 2005) (source UN, commodity Trade Database, October 2006).
Since 1999 the USA has become a net importer of Agrifood with a growing dependance on imported food products.

Australia and the USA have recently entered into a FTA. As part of the FTA the tariffs on up to 50 seafood products was and is being reduced. The competitiveness of Australian seafood products versus domestic and international competition has grown.

California is one of the most affluent economies in the world. Consumers have high disposable incomes and a propensity to spend money on entertainment. California also consumes 23% of the country’s specialty food indicating an appreciation and education of fine food, including a propensity to buy.

Food markets are driven by indulgence, health and convenience. No where in the world is this trend more relevant than California. Seafood delivers both indulgence and health in foodservice and indulgence, health and convenience to home consumer.

The purpose of this project is to collect and analyse the information needed to create an efficient, quality led supply chain from Australia to the regions top importer distributors.

The need for on-going research into aquaculture nutrition and the need for continued inputs to how this research is conducted to ensure it is completed to the highest possible standard is emphasized by the fact that Australian aquaculture industries have a heavy reliance on imported nutrition technologies, feeds and ingredients for the supply of nutrients to target species. This includes feed manufacturing technologies, ingredients such as bait fish, fish meals, crustacean meals and fish oils, and complete feeds such as those utilised by the prawn industry. Not only does this create issues in relation to imported disease risks, continuity of supply and cost, but it means that many local products are being under utilised.

There is currently renewed interest in establishing a dedicated aquaculture nutrition research program due to the increase in cost of fishmeals and oils, their increasingly limited availability and potential contamination with antibiotic residues such as chloramphenicols if the meals are derived from some aquaculture reared products. In addition, pressure from consumers to limit the use of animal proteins in diets and limit interspecies recycling has applied new pressure to feed manufacturers and increased the need to identify and utilise alternative vegetable protein sources in aquafeeds. The increased value of the Australian dollar has also increased competition from imports and the need for the Australian sector to become increasingly efficient to remain internationally competitive with nutrition playing a key role in their capacity to achieve this.