2024 eel industry market supply and demand analysis: China's eel consumption is also increasing.

The eel is a fish that resembles a long snake in appearance and has the basic characteristics of a fish. Eels are mainly distributed in the Yangtze River, Minjiang River, Pearl River Basin and Hainan Island in China. Eels in the world mainly grow in tropical and temperate waters. Eels like to live in clean and unpolluted waters and are the purest aquatic organisms in the world. Eels spawn and reproduce in the deep sea and grow in freshwater environments. Fierce temperament, gluttony, active, nocturnal, tend to strong optical activity, like water, good warm. It has the characteristics of cave swimming and can abscond into the cave. Eel is rich in nutrition, delicious taste, less thorns and more meat, and has the effect of cooling and relieving summer heat, nourishing and strengthening the body. In China and many parts of the world, it is regarded as a good tonic and beauty product, so it is called "edible cosmetics".

Eel with medicinal value, its sweet taste, flat, with spleen and lung, kidney and chong, wind and dehumidification effect. Eel is rich in protein, vitamin A, vitamin D, calcium, magnesium, selenium and other nutrients, high nutritional value, known as "gold in water." The skin and meat of eel are rich in collagen, which can nourish beauty and delay aging. It is regarded as a good tonic and beauty product in China and many parts of the world, so it is called "edible cosmetics".

Eel fry cannot be cultivated by artificial reproduction, mainly because eels have a very special life history, which is difficult to simulate in a man-made environment. Japanese eels grow up in freshwater rivers and begin to migrate to the sea in summer, that is, they swim from the river to the ocean to spawn, as opposed to the anadromous migration of trout and salmon from the ocean back to the river to spawn. Its spawning ground is thousands of kilometers away in the deep sea between the Philippines and the Malaysian Na Islands. Scientists have discovered this spawning ground mainly because of the many fish it has just hatched.

Analysis on the Development Status of Eel Market

Eel year refers to September last year to August this year, such as 2022 eel year from September 2021 to August 2022. Eel seedling is the foundation of eel raising and even the whole eel industry. The special living habits of the eel determine the difficulty of artificial breeding of its seedlings, and the seedlings needed for eel breeding are still completely dependent on the natural eel seedlings. Affected by the amount of resources, climate factors and natural disasters and other factors, there are some differences in the catch of eel seedlings in different years. According to statistics, since September 2022, Japanese eel seedlings have been affected by the above factors, fishing has failed, and the catch has dropped sharply, a record low in recent years.

Eel fishing in East Asia began in November of the previous year and ended in May of that year. Affected by ocean currents, geothermal, typhoon and other climatic factors, the annual catch of eel seedlings will fluctuate sharply. After a bumper harvest in 2020, the catch of eel seedlings fell sharply in the two consecutive fishing seasons from 2021 to 2022. A total of 42.45 tons of eel seedlings were captured in the 2022 eel seedling fishing season, a decrease of 27.81 year-on-year. A total of 49 tons of eel seedlings were captured in the eel seedling fishing season in 2023.

Japanese eel is the most important breeding species in the world, and its seedling catch is affected by non-human factors such as climate and natural seedling volume, so there are large fluctuations in the fishing season in different years. Since the big year of fishing in 2020, the catch of Japanese eel has been declining year by year. China is the country with the largest catch of Japanese eel. In the past five years, the catch of eel seedlings in mainland China accounted for 67% of the total catch in East Asia.

In terms of eel farming, China is the world's largest eel fry catcher and eel farming producer. The main eel producing areas are in the coastal areas of Guangdong (Shunde) and Fujian. The upstream of the eel breeding industry chain is eel fry fishing, which will be sent to eel fry farms and adult eel farms for artificial breeding, the middle reaches is eel fry breeding and adult eel breeding, and the downstream is eel processing and live eel trade, and finally export and domestic consumption.

According to the Research Report on In-depth Research and Development Trend Forecast of China's Eel Industry from 2023 to 2028 released by the Institute of Industrial Research of China Research and Development:

In China's eel farming areas, such as Guangdong, Fujian and other provinces, eel fry are usually released from March to May. At this time, the specifications of eel fry are relatively small, generally about 2000-3000 per kilogram, and the number of eel fry is determined according to the breeding plan of farmers and the actual situation of the farm. In 2022, the amount of eel fry in China is about 47 tons.

According to statistics, Fujian Province accounted for 45% of China's eel production in 2021; Guangdong Province accounted for 43%; The total eel production of the two provinces accounted for 98%. However, with the gradual maturity of breeding technology, especially the rapid development of intensive pond breeding mode, environmental temperature is no longer a decisive factor in determining the eel breeding area, and the proportion of eel production in areas with water quality resources such as Jiangxi and Hubei is expected to gradually increase.

China's eel production in 2022 is about 275100 tons, most of which are concentrated in Fujian, Jiangxi, Shandong, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. On the demand side, China's eel consumption is also increasing. In the past, eels were mainly sold abroad as export products, but with the increase of domestic consumers' awareness and demand for eels, domestic eel consumption is also gradually increasing. At present, domestic eel consumption has accounted for a large part of the total output, and the demand for eel in China will be about 27.14 tons in 2022.

Analysis on Import and Export Market of Eel Industry

China has always been an eel exporter, but in recent years, due to the reduction of domestic eel resources and competition in foreign markets, China's eel export volume has declined. At the same time, with the increase in domestic consumer demand for eels, China's eel imports have also increased. In 2022, China's eel import volume is about 8100 tons and the export volume is 11800 tons.

China is the world's largest eel breeding, processing and exporting country. At present, my country's eel industry has formed a complete industrial chain from seedling, breeding, feed production, roasted eel processing, export trade, and scientific research. According to statistics, China exported 50100 tons of roasted eel in 2022, down 16.2 percent from the same period last year, and the export value was 0.99 billion billion US dollars, down 15.6 percent from the same period last year. In terms of export structure, Japan will still be the country with the largest export of roasted eels in China in 2022, accounting for 46.68 and 49.66 percent of total exports and total exports respectively. This was followed by Malaysia, the United States and Russia, which accounted for 16.95 per cent, 7.42 per cent and 5.38 per cent of exports, respectively.