Northern Ireland’s Rooney Fish resumes seafood sales to China

Northern Ireland’s Rooney Fish resumes seafood sales to China

Rooney Fish in Kilkeel, County Down, one of Ireland’s largest fish and seafood companies, has resumed sales to China after months of the coronavirus lockdown there.

The family-owned and managed business has received orders from established customers there and has just shipped its first consignments of whole brown crab to Guangzhou and its multi-award-winning Millbay Oysters to Shanghai. Rooney’s Millbay Oysters have been named the best in the UK and Ireland.

Managing director Andrew Rooney says the company, which employs around 70 people in Kilkeel, has been selling around 800 tonnes of crab to China every year and has devoted significant time and other resources to developing exports of its Millbay Oysters. These are grown in the company’s farm, the largest in Ireland, on Carlingford Lough, to customers throughout China and other parts of Asia especially Japan and South Korea.

The business in China was frozen in December as authorities in Beijing battled with the widening coronavirus pandemic that had started in a wet market in Wuhan. Now China has reopened its borders and is resuming trade with suppliers in international markets.

While business in China, one of Rooney Fish’s most important international markets, is steadily starting to recover, the company has been forced to address transportation problems which are making it difficult to get the products to this market.

“Because air freight carriers have dropped off and there are only a few now flying to China, we are trying hard to get space on flights. We’re also trying to send containers of our product to overseas markets but now there is also a big problem because many cargo ships are not sailing because of the lockdowns,” Mr Rooney adds.