Chinese New Year 2023, the year of the Rabbit

This year, the Chinese New Year holiday begins on January 22nd, when we will enter the year of the Rabbit. As you already know, New Year festivities entail the suspension of all industrial and commercial activity for almost a month since there is a rural exodus of workers, who visit their relatives.

As far as business and imports are concerned, some issues should be considered during the CNY:

• The previous and later weeks are complex due to an increase in incidents and errors at the origin.
• Plants need 3 to 4 weeks to return to pre-closure normality.
• Prices “reset” during the shutdown and, when everything is over, they tend to be very high.
• Although the current situation doesn’t allow us to know how they will react, freight costs also tend to have a post-CNY upward impact.
• Plants usually have orders scheduled upon return to business, so new orders are delayed 3-5 weeks longer than usual.

Chinese New Year is also celebrated in Vietnam, where it’s known as Têt (short for Têt Nguyeê Dán), with the same closing days and consequences.

For all these reasons, we advise our partners to plan to minimize the impact of the closure, and avoid stock-outs and supply problems that could affect the Easter period, an important moment in fish consumption.