Seafood giant celebrates signing of zero-tariff pact with mainland, with world record bid
One of Hong Kong's largest seafood firms yesterday unveiled what it hopes is the world's biggest abalone mountain, while announcing ambitious expansion plans aimed at cashing in on the scrapping of cross-border trade tariffs with the mainland.
On Kee Dry Seafood said it would establish new plants to process dried seafood to meet a burgeoning demand among the increasingly wealthy mainland population.
To celebrate its plans, the firm constructed a mountain of 24,214 abalone - weighing 500kg and valued at $3 million - in an attempt to qualify for an entry in Guinness World Records.
The second stage of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (Cepa) with the mainland on Friday placed zero tariffs on a further 713 products, including dried seafood produced or processed in Hong Kong. The company said this offered the prospect of attractive profits from mainlanders' increasing appetite for quality abalone, shark fins and bird's nests.
'In the past 15 years, mainlanders have become increasingly rich. Many of them would die for a taste of abalone, traditionally a dish fit only for the king,' managing director Richard Poon Kuen-fai said at a seafood seminar organised by the company.
