Iceland's nice, but don't ignore Asia
This issue of Mainebiz has a focus on exports and imports.
Senior Writer Lori Valigra has a story that goes a long way toward explaining the complexities of foreign exchange and how some companies have gotten bitten by currency fluctuations. WEX and Sterling Rope Co. Inc. are just two companies that have had to decipher the forex mess of recent months.
Two other stories with an export theme are taking traditional products — lobsters and baby eels known as elvers — and finding burgeoning markets in Asia. Senior Writer James McCarthy talked to Tom Adams, founder of Maine Coast Shellfish, a York company whose sales skyrocketed from zero four years ago to $40 million. The company's most significant export is lobster — and certain markets apparently can't get enough of it. State numbers buttress what Jim's story shows, which is that China and other global markets have become huge for some of Maine's fisheries. Correspondent Laurie Schreiber, who is based in Bass Harbor, helps us make sense of an elver fishery that was once little noticed — that is, until fish buyers from Asia started knocking on the door. Dock prices of $1,000 a pound brought what was once a Wild West kind of unregulated fishery into the modern world. State quotas have brought the industry under control, but regulations have done little to temper sales.
A lot has been said in the past year about Maine's trade with Iceland, and rightly so. It is a significant market and a gateway to northern Europe. But there's ample evidence that Asia will be getting similar attention, particularly with the Maine International Trade Center's fall trade mission to Japan and China.
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