Preliminary Study On Abalone Industry In Rongcheng, Shandong Focused On Its Structure And Characteristics

“Preliminary Study on Abalone Industry in Rongcheng, Shandong Focused on ItsStructure and Characteristics” is a part of “Studies on Abalone Industry Focused on ItsStructure and Characteristics”, which in one of the most important researches of the NationalShellfish Industrial System during the12th five-year plan. Goals and contents of this study are toexplore the abalone industry’s background, histories and current situations, production andregional structures, industrial chains and organization, et al. in Rongcheng. Beside thoseresearches on the industrial level, the study also need to analyze characteristics of individualindustries and their market behaviors, inputs and outputs, and relationships among them. Thoseresearches on different levels could help to find out deep problems in the abalone industry inRongcheng, which could be used for references for the managers, producers and otherstakeholders.As there are few references can be found about structure and characteristics ofabalone industry, the author tentatively uses Chain Thesis, Industrial OrganizationThesis and SCP analytical paradigm into the study, which is meaningful for buildingmethods and frameworks of similar researches.The author uses half-open-ended questionnaires, interviewing with experts andproducers, talking with workers, and other methods of field survey into to the researchand gets abundant fresh data and information.The basic conclusion of this study are lined as follows:(1) the abalone industrialchain in Rongcheng contains seed producing, grow-out, food processing, seaweed andequipment supply, and marketing;(2) seed producing industry started in the end of1980s, and took off in the1990s because of getting several breakthrough in seedproducing. By now coenospecies of Haliotis discus hannai is the only speciescultured artificially in the area;(3) culturing of the abalond seeds began in1973to the middle and later periods of1990s, established in the end of1990s, took off after usingtransregionally cultured methods and now its still in growing periods. The maincultured methods is raft culture on the coast, bottom culture and factory farming areless used. Transregional culture plays an important role in the industry.(4) capacitiesof food produce of abalone is weak; fresh abalone is the main kind of product;producing chain is based on artifical culture; distribution of products are the mainmarketing channel, direct marketing is in the secondary place; most of the productsare sold to other cities;(5) seed producing, grow-out, seaweed producing areintegrated in one enterprise; individual farms rely on big enterprises on seed, seaweedsupplies and marketing.(6) as to organization of the farming industry, the marketconcentration and the rate of profit is low, and the market is in monopolizecompetition.Problems in the industry are as following: the seed industry deadly needsimproved seed; the risk resistance of farming industry is weak and it is hard to startother cultured methods; their are issues between different regionals; it is hard torealize the industrialization of abalone food producing; the mode of production chainis less of diversification, and the length of industrial chain is short; the industrialsystem is in the raw; their are little advantages of its product; and the performance ofthe industrial organization is low.For the reasons above, the research puts forward the following suggestions: it isvital to unite the strength of scientific research institutes and enterprises to overcomeseed problems; it is also important to conjunct each stakeholders to build varieties ofcultured methods, to make the abalone food producing industrialization and to buildan integrated industrial system; strengthening communications between the southand the north is one of the way to resolve issues in the transregional culture; and soon.