Why price in Thailand is so incredible high?

This is the question that many customers want to ask Thai packer “ Why the price is so high?”. Within 1 month, shrimp price increased almost 30% in some size which was the disaster for Thai packer. I had discussed with many shrimp gurus, auditors and R&D people who travel all over the world for shrimp business.

The main reasons that I summarize are as below;

1) Virus : The most scary name in this business have to be “IMNV”. This virus made many Indonesian farmers went bankrupt and believe it will take a year for them to recover.
2) Climate change : Reason should came from Elnino. Too hot temperature in Thailand caused slow growth rate, crop delay and low survival rate.
3) Crop delay and low productivity in Vietnam : The season should come by now but until today, we still not see anything yet. Also in China, a lot of shrimp die in first crop and hopefully good thing will come for the next crop (around next month).
4) High domestic demand in China : Not enough supply force Chinese to source more from Thailand and Vietnam.
5) Oil leaking in USA : Actually effect only 5% of total quantity but due to news that sometime much more over than the reality. Today US buyer move very fast and they can accept higher price in order to fulfill domestic market demand. US economy start to improve so more buying power will come in second half of this year.
6) Dirty game : there’s a rumor in the market that one big company who has main business in feed and fry is playing game with the market. By spreading news to farmer that shrimp price will go up until end of the year and ask farmer to delay harvesting. The result is farmers believe and buy more fry, putting more baby shrimp and buying more feed. This is the first benefit. The second benefit is when big company stops financing farmer, they have to sell all the shrimp to the market and if most of supply came to the market at the same time, price will go down very quick and at that time, that big company can buy raw material at very cheap price while order that they got in hand are very selling price.


In October, situation should be better for buyer and if you want to buy shrimp, buy now. If you can wait, wait until end October but don’t wait too long because price will go up again in winter, end of this year.

This is just my own opinion, good luck!!!