SEAFOODNEWS.COM [henandaily] Translated by Amy Zhong March 17, 2017
Zhengzhou of Henan welcomes its 13th flight of Canadian lobsters this year. More and more high-end seafood is being flown here from the North America.
One reason is the expansion of airfreight capacity to China from seafood shipping locations such as Halifax. Even after Chinese New Year has ended, there are two flights a week of wide-body cargo jets with service from Nova Scotia to China.
At 3 am of March 15, a cargo plane from Canada landed in Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport. On the plane are 71.3 tons of Canadian lobsters worth around 6.5 million yuan. This is the 13th batch of Canadian lobsters which have flown here by designated planes. Nowadays this city has received an increasingly great number of high-end lobsters.
According to Zhengzhou customs, it has inspected only 12.89 tons of Canadian lobsters in 2016, but the number skyrockets to around 498.51 tons within the first two months of this year. Their total value reaches 41.2319 million yuan. Live Canadian lobsters are new import species and they are priced at 112 thousand yuan per ton ($US 16.2 / $CA 21.67 per kg). Their import volume is comparatively high and has risen to become the second largest imported seafood of Zhengzhou airport. This in turn pushes up the overall import prices.
Zhengzhou customs has made its clearance faster and simplified relevant procedures in order to turn the local airport into China’s distribution center of imported fresh food. The city is located away from the coast, south of Beijing in Henan province. And it ensures that commodities are cleared within one hour after their landing. This further assists the import of such fresh food as Canadian lobsters, which are mostly sold to cities like Beijing and Shanghai.