Mark Godfrey

Contributing Editor

Mark Godfrey is an Irish journalist covering the agriculture and fisheries sectors in Asia, with a focus on China. Proficient in Mandarin, he has frequently traveled across China's fisheries and aquaculture regions and learned the inner workings of China's corporate world during a nearly three-year stint at the Financial Times' “China Confidential” publication. He has also reported widely across Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. He has educational certificates in agriculture and food science, as well as Mandarin.


Author Archive

Published on
January 2, 2024

Dublin, Ireland-based aquaculture technology company NanobOx has received a new round of funding to help it bring its innovative oxygenation technology to market and kickstart the country’s stagnant domestic aquaculture sector.

The fresh round of funding comes after the company already secured Series A funding of EUR 900,000 (USD 972,000) from a consortium of venture capital investors who have bought into NanobOx’s energy-efficient

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Published on
December 29, 2023

World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators have struggled to conclude talks on ending harmful fishery subsidies, and as each day goes by, the 31 December deadline to agree on a draft text – set by Icelandic WTO Ambassador Einar Gunnarsson, who has been chairing the talks – looms larger.

The ongoing talks aim to build upon a deal the WTO reached in 2022, which prohibited subsidy support for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU)

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Published on
December 28, 2023

Norwegian krill processor Aker BioMarine has described the effort to replace krill as an ingredient in aquafeed as “ill-advised.”

This critique comes after the Future of Fish Feed (F3) – a collaborative effort between NGOs, researchers, and private partnerships that supports innovative efforts to scale up sustainable fish feed production – recently announced a shortlist of 10 companies that have been named finalists in

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Published on
December 18, 2023
A leading Chinese aquaculture company has signed an agreement to build an integrated fish-farming facility in Vanuatu, continuing a long line of recent diplomatic efforts China has made with Pacific Island nations to expand its influence in the region. Under the terms of the deal, Chengmai, Hainan-based Hainan Xiangtai Fishery Company will invest CNY 500 million (USD 70 million, EUR 65 million) in partnership with local firm Mata’ariki… Read More
Published on
December 12, 2023

Seafood purchases in China’s restaurant market are drying up as consumer demand dwindles.

Prices for staple mass market species including pangasius and snakehead are down an average of 20 percent year over year, as suppliers push to revive both consumer and restaurant demand. 

China’s restaurant scene has seen an influx of new players in recent years, and heavier competition is also resulting in lower prices, according to

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Published on
December 11, 2023

Alicia Garcia Herrero, the head economist for the Asia Pacific region at French investment bank Natixis, has said lower growth in China has the country focused on maintaining its trade surplus and sustaining its manufacturing sector, especially its high-value exports.

Traditional drivers of growth in China – the debt-fueled building of infrastructure and real estate – have cooled off, while foreign investors remain wary of the

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Published on
December 5, 2023

A senior researcher at China’s Ministry of Agriculture recently gave an upbeat assessment on the country’s seafood import market, signaling that although the nation remains a powerhouse in domestic seafood production, it will maintain its newfound status as a net importer for the foreseeable future.

“The potential for seafood imports will be fully unleashed soon,” Xie Zhongmin, the deputy head of research at the

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Published on
November 29, 2023

China became a net importer of seafood in 2022, and that trend is likely to continue as the country has prioritized exporting higher-value industrial products like automobiles over lower-value export commodities like processed fish, according to Gorjan Nikolik, the chief seafood analyst at Dutch financial services company Rabobank.

China, which surpassed Japan this summer in becoming the world’s top exporter of cars, seems primed to become

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Published on
November 28, 2023

Irish Fish Producers Organization CEO Aodh O’Donnell has accused Iceland of deliberately pursuing a policy of overfishing over the past decade while it fixes a unilateral mackerel quota almost three times greater than that of Ireland.

Iceland is “plundering” mackerel stocks for use in fishmeal production as part of its effort to establish claims on stocks through self-allocated quotas, according to O’Donnell, who said

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Published on
November 24, 2023

A visit by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to the China Export Import Fair in Shanghai on 5 November partially aimed to encourage the Chinese government to renew its approval of permits for Australian seafood companies seeking to export lobster.

Albanese’s visit was the latest step in the normalization of relations between the two countries, but this thawing has yet to deliver any major benefit to the seafood sector, despite the

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