Crabs hit by downturn

By Angela Xu  |   2008-12-16  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

YANGCHENG Lake hairy crabs, which are normally sold out by early December, are still available in the market and the price of the delicacy has come down.

In the Wuning Road Carrefour supermarket, a 150-gram male or a 100-gram female hairy crab can be snapped up for 20 yuan (US$2.92).

Male Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, usually considered the finest, are selling for 176 yuan a kilogram. In September, they cost 316 yuan a kilogram.

The drop has broken three years of price stability for Yangcheng Lake crabs. Some crab sellers say they are selling a third fewer crabs than they did last year.

?¨Sales were quite good when the hairy crab season opened,? said Wu Shujuan, marketing manager of Shanghai Jinhai Food Co, a local Yangcheng Lake hairy crab trader. ?¨But in November and December it all changed. Orders from hotels have dropped sharply.?

Wu said sellers aim to get rid of crabs quickly because they deteriorate if they are kept too long. She was concerned about the state of the hairy crab market next year and suggested perhaps fewer crabs would be harvested.

Industry experts said the world financial crisis was the main reason for the sluggish market. A market analyzer surnamed Tang with the Tongchuan Road Aquatic Products Market said the global financial crisis had made a lot of gourmets cut back on spending on delicacies such as hairy crabs.