At the 2018 Seafood Expo North America in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., Ecuador’s National Chamber of Aquaculture (CNA) helped to launch the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership, a move CNA Executive President José Antonio Camposano described as a key in the country’s development of its shrimp sector intoa USD 5 billion (EUR 4.6 billion) export powerhouse.
Four years later, at the 2022 Seafood Expo North America, Camposano told SeafoodSource the initiative has succeeded beyond even the lofty expectations those who played important roles in SSP’s founding had for the initiative.
“At that time, the vision was to create a vehicle to communicate the differences between Ecuador and other shrimp-producing countries – making ourselves stand apart in a commoditized market,” Camposano said. “We looked around at the industry globally and had a lot of agreement that our advantage could be a series of principles that we could all share built around good industry practices and sustainability. Our differentiator could be our way of doing things. From there, it very rapidly evolved from what could we do to position Ecuadorian shrimp in the marketplace to a self-directed movement within our industry toward sustainability, competitiveness, constant improvement, and innovation.”
Camposano credited consultant Avrim Lazar, the convenor of the Global Salmon Initiative, as an important figure in creating agreement and movement in Ecuador’s shrimp industry toward building SSP around transparency and sustainability.