The Shrimp Converter was created when it was realized that the various world markets marketed and commercialized differently. There are three major factors that usually differentiate the shrimp between the markets- the species of shrimp, the size of it and the product type (Diagram 1).
In the shrimp market, the different players market their shrimp using different benchmarks. A problem arises when producers and buyers are in communication since they both refer to shrimp in different “languages”. A producer markets the shrimp at whole shrimp weight at harvest e.g. 30 gram shrimp. On the other hand, an American buyer for example will order headless Black Tiger Shrimp, size 21-25 pc/lb. To bridge the different “languages” between what the producer means and what the buyer wants, a table was created to easily translate across the different product groups.
For the Shrimp Coverter, it has been identified that the main shrimp importers are the United States (USA), the European Union (EU), Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Australia. Each of these markets demand different shrimp with different sizes and product types which are all represented by the different HOSO groupings. |
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