US seafood body National Fisheries Institute (NFI) is to become the home of the Global Shrimp Council as the group begins work to create a precompetitive partnership designed to promote US shrimp consumption.
In September 2023, co-founders David Castro from Manta Bay Seafood and Gabriel Luna from Gluna Shrimp announced plans for the group during the Global Shrimp Forum Foundation meeting in the Netherlands. The goal then was to be organised before the end of this year with a leadership team and funding arrangement in place.
NFI already manages collaborative work as part of its council system for tuna, crab, shrimp, Mexican shrimp, sushi and salmon.
“We are excited to get started on this work,” NFI Vice President of External Affairs and Councils Brandon Phillips said. “Creating a structure for the group, collecting funding, and instituting a management structure aren’t quite as sexy as live-fire promotion and marketing. But it’s these foundational things that need to be done first. And they are getting underway.”
“In the Netherlands we received initial funding commitments from some of the biggest shrimp producers in the world,” Castro said. “They see the need for this type of promotion and will be the driving force behind it. We are excited to work with them.”
There has already been almost a year’s worth of preliminary work done on the effort guided by one of the architects of the Avocados from Mexico strategy. Governance, finance and membership composition will be the first tenets addressed by NFI and the new group’s leadership.
