European Seafood Exposition

Hei alle!

Etter sol kommer regn! Den siste uken har vært veldig positiv for oss som jobber med SUSHISI. Fokuset er på alt det positive som skjer nå. Vi bruker tiden til å finslipe produksjonsprosessen med vår nye norske produsent og det er positivt å jobbe med en så profesjonell aktør! Vi jobber hardt med produktutvikling og for å bringe inn en stor investor. Det er en utrolig spennende tid vi er inne i. Vi gleder oss stort til SUSHISI-boksene konstant blir å finne i frysediskene rundt i landet!

SUSHISI-gründer Nayoung Mathiesen har også vært på European Seafood Exposition i Brussel. Her vises det siste innen fiskeribransjen og vi ville vite de siste trendene rundt sushi.

Les Nayoungs erfaringer fra messen i Brussel:

"A visit to the annual European Seafood Exposition in Brussels is important where everyone in the business gathers and one can see the trend, new products, and meet customers and suppliers – old and new. To make a day trip out of this, I had to get up at 04:00 and with a pair of sneakers on prepared to do 8+ hours of walking on endless concrete floors.

Most of the 1700 companies are raw material exporters – white fish, yellow fish, red fish, pink fish, shell fish, frozen, fresh, deep water fish, and pelagic fish. By the way, pelagic is one word which I finally learned the meaning of – it refers to fish which live near the surface of the sea as opposed to the deep sea fish. Examples are herring, mackerel, etc. Just in case anyone is interested.

Two years ago, I found a number of large Japanese and non-Japanese companies (many Asian companies) who were there displaying sushi related products – many of them with frozen ready-made sushi. But to think of some hundreds of Chinese ladies standing in the factory making sushi by hand so the western consumers can consume – something did not seem quite right. Besides, thawing frozen sushi is a big problem. One will have to either leave the sushi in room temperature for 3-5 hours, or put the vacuum packed sushi in 30 degree water, or put them into microwave oven – none of them seem to make sense, nor do they sound appetizing. Last year’s show showed that a number of the companies dropped the idea of frozen sushi. It simply was not a good enough solution. This year, there seem to be just a few strong Japanese companies who are still trying with the sushi ideas.

Conclusion is simply that there still are no sushi concepts as advanced as our SUSHISI. Only other available retail sushi concept seems to be take-away or frozen take-away. It was good to confirm that we have good products with an advanced innovative concept. I was also pleasantly surprised that some of the large and well known companies are now interested in working with us. Mind you that it was not the case at all 2-3 years ago when we were desperately looking for a production partner. Companies thought that we had good ideas but most of them were sceptical as to whether we were going to succeed in turning the good ideas to real products.

Further, Norwegian seafood companies were too busy making money by selling whole fish, and they were not quite interested in putting resources into new innovation before it had become a proven success.

I took some pictures of good Japanese stand design ideas for our future participation in the Exposition – maybe next year? Exciting thought. As I was returning home with a pair of very tired legs, I was a happy person inside".

En riktig god helg ønskes fra SUSHISI!