The Australian farmed prawn sector faces a number of existing and emerging strategic issues that will impact its performance of the next 5-10 years. The forces driving these trends are quite dynamic and therefore demand an up-to-date planning processes be always available to the APFA Executive Committee.

Some of these drivers and trends are beyond APFA's control (eg weaker A$, import competition and market positioning, proposed significant new domestic investment in the sector), while others are not (improved sustainability across Australian farming systems, reliance on casual labour, communication across the sector, alignment of sector R&D with strategy direction, precompetitive marketing, etc). The APFA's strategy review workshop (Mid 2015) identified a list of issues which collectively indicate that the sector needs to review its strategic and R&D Plans.

In July-Sept 2016 the APFA undertook a process to establish a new marketing strategy for the sector. This scanning process related to this Plan also revealed a number of broader issues in new farm investments, production technologies, and supply, that will influence the sectors marketing performance in coming years.

As a result of these reviews and processes and recent discussion across the industry, the APFA Executive Committee intends to undertake a comprehensive Strategic and R,D&E Planning process to bring together and document all the relevant issues in a coordinated and fosussed process lead by an independent party. The new Strategic and RD&E Plan document will be a tangible output from that 5 month process.