Amid China’s food safety scandals, startup gets $20m to fly in seafood

Cross-continental lobster. Photo credit: Paul.

Lobster from Maine, milk from Australia – China’s appetite for foreign food has grown steadily over the years. And Chinese investors are taking note.

Alibaba’s investment arm Riverhill Fund and Legend Capital today put US$20 million into Gfresh, an online marketplace for trading and selling seafood to buyers in China. The two-year old company offers logistics and final delivery services to seafood providers in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

It also provides real-time tracking of seafood and promises full traceability of goods – a must when it comes to delivering seafood to Chinese consumers plagued by food safety scares.

“Although many companies claim quality assurance for fresh product straight from the source, the reality is that a lot of companies lack stringent import controls,” said the company today.

Gfresh plans to cooperate with Tmall, Alibaba’s huge ecommerce marketplace, which already offers users fresh seafood delivery.

Buyer beware

Food safety has always been a sensitive topic for Chinese consumers, who are scarred from a number of domestic food scandals, notably a horrific baby formula tragedy in 2008 that left 300,000 babies sick with melamine-tainted milk. After that, Chinese parents started opting for imported or foreign baby products, sometimes swiping an entire country’s supply of baby formula.

China’s growing demand for overseas food also has to do with rising wages among the country’s middle-class, as well as the fact that China has 20 percent of the world’s population and only 9% of its arable land. For seafood providers outside of China, it’s an enormous opportunity.