A seafood processing factory in the central province of Quang Ngai. Vietnamese exporters are urged to foster seafood shipments to Switzerland. (Photo: VNA)Nguyen Duc Thuong, Commercial Counsellor at Vietnam Trade Officein Switzerland, said that as a landlocked country, Switzerland had to importalmost all of its seafood.
Each year, the Swiss market consumes about 75,000-80,000 tonnes ofseafood and Vietnam is the fourth largest seafood provider for Switzerland,after Norway, France and the Netherlands, Thuong told baochinhphu.vn.
He said Switzerland's import demand for seafood products wouldlikely increase by 4.6% this year, with the consumption trend gradually movingtowards organic products.
Therefore, Vietnamese businesses needed to foster theirinvestments in processing seafood products and exporting organic products tocapture this consumption opportunity, and at the same time enhance links withexisting partners.
According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters andProducers (VASEP), enterprises that intend to promote export to this marketneed to pay attention to product quality issues as Switzerland requires veryhigh-quality products with a very strict import licensing regime to ensurehealth, food hygiene and safety standards.
All food sold in Switzerland has to comply with European and Swissfood labelling regulations. Consumers in this country are very interested ineco-labels and are willing to pay extra if the product meets health andenvironmental requirements.
Besides, Switzerland attaches great importance to the MSC (MarineStewardship Council) standard and has for many years been the country with thelargest consumption of MSC-labelled seafood products in the world.
Demand for seafood with MSC certification is increasing. There aremany companies trading whitefish, salmon, herring and tuna in Switzerland thathave obtained COC (chain of safety certification) and used the MSC label ontheir seafood products.
Over the past nine months of 2023, two-way trade between Vietnamand Switzerland saw a modest increase of 2 per cent to over 1.85 billion USD.Of the total, over 1.42 billion USD came from Vietnamese exports, down 2%year-on-year./.
VNA
