China-Australia relations: lobster exporters look to ‘reboot’ in alternative markets after years of relying on Chinese demand
- Australia’s annual export of roughly 11,000 tonnes of live rock lobsters came to a halt when China unofficially banned them last year amid trade woes
- Following their 2015 trade agreement, most of Australia’s rock lobster supply started going to China, but now ‘re-engaging old markets again will take time’
Relations between China and Australia have become fraught over the past year after Canberra pushed for an international probe into the origin of the coronavirus without diplomatic consultations beforehand, and Beijing eventually responded with a number of trade blocks on wine, barley, cotton, copper, coal, sugar and lobsters. We look at the issues in this series.
South Australian rock lobster fisher and exporter Andrew Ferguson has more time for marketing these days.
Earlier this month, he launched a Chinese social media page on WeChat for his lobster business, Ferguson Australia, to reconnect with his long-time Chinese clients with whom he had no dealings for a number of months.
Up until the coronavirus outbreak at the start of last year, Ferguson was exporting about 450 tonnes of live southern rock lobsters to China a year – a trade he had finessed for three decades.
I guess we had become complacent when consumed by China’s demand. Now we have the chance to reboot and cover a lot of ground that we had ignored
On the whole, Australia’s annual export of roughly 11,000 tonnes of live rock lobsters came to a halt.
“We are all certainly surprised here in Australia that China would ban our lobster. Over the years we made many friends through the Chinese supply chain,” Ferguson said.