From June 26 to 28, during the period of ASC tilapia standards training workshop to auditors and producers, CAPPMA together with WWF has an interview in Hainan focusing on tilapia farms and processing factories. According to the visit, optimistic opinions have been discovered on the face of tilapia industrial experts. Compared with 2012, the price of tilapia has increased about 15%. The export price of tilapia processed products is 5% higher than it was at this time last year, according to the processing factories.

It is obviously that the first half year’s business index of tilapia industry has promoted largely than last year. In 2012, the whole tilapia industry has suffered sluggish for the reason of international economic recession. The common situation is that Chinese tilapia farms and processing companies are hardly to get benefits while some even appeared deficit. Learning from the lesson, certain farms have changed to other species to farm. Based on the situation, this year’s farming area of tilapia in main producing areas will reduce 20-30%. This number will be higher in Guangdong province.

However, from the view of cultivation, this year is much better than 2012. On the one hand, the rate of disease has declined. Through stocking supplement of fingerlings, the industry returns to normal producing getting rid of the disease influence to juvenile fish. On the other hand, price rising has encouraged the enthusiasm of farmers. The third reason is that both trend of domestic and international market is improving.

After two years’ industrial integration, tilapia industry will enter into a stable phase in the following years. No big fluctuation will emerge most of the industrial stakeholders thought. At present, pond cultivation is still the main form of tilapia farming. Cage cultivation just exists as subsidiary. And mariculture tilapia lies on the initial stage of testing. Generally, farming feeds are mostly from Guangdong Evergreen and Tongwei group such big feed companies.

During the visit, some large scaled farms are eager for joining into ASC certification. According to our forecast there are more than 20 farming companies would like to apply ASC tilapia standard certification, and more than 10 processing factories are looking for ASC CoC qualification.