Shipping & Handling

Shipping seafood to China is a solved problem, in the sense that the lanes exist, the equipment is standard and the services are scheduled. What is not automatic is arriving in selling condition, and that is decided long before the ocean: at the moment of processing, at the packing table, and at every handoff in between.

For anyone looking to sell fish to China from Canada, the physical question comes down to two decisions. First, where the product is processed: at sea on a freezer vessel, which locks quality at the moment of harvest and produces the frozen-at-sea grades that sell to the top of the market, or onshore at a plant, which delivers the exact form and grade on the buyer's spec sheet. Second, which lane it travels: a set-point reefer container on scheduled ocean services, the workhorse for frozen product, or air freight for live lobster, crab and geoduck, where vigorous arrival is the product itself. Reefer containers reach any major Chinese port, so routing follows the buyer, not geography.

What goes wrong is nearly always a break in the chain rather than a failure of the lane: a warm dwell on a dock, a container stuffed slow, a weak animal packed for a flight it cannot survive, paperwork that disagrees with the load and holds a cold container in a hot queue. A temperature excursion can cost acceptance, not just quality, and a rejected container is a season's margin gone. The discipline that prevents all of it is knowable and plannable.

Our role covers the whole chain: we agree the format and grading spec with the buyer, aggregate supply from multiple harvesters and plants to container scale, book the equipment or the air lane, plan the stuffing or packing, and prepare the documentation that travels with the load. Payment is secured before product leaves the dock and our fee is a success-based commission, so the shipping risk sits on our side of the table. You land, process and pack to spec; the lane is our problem.