The first inquiry from a US buyer often asks exactly one thing: “What is your glazing percentage, and how do you compute net weight?” Plenty of Taiwanese processors fail right there — quoting glazed gross weight as net, passing the sample stage, then losing the first container’s payment to a short-weight claim after deglazed reweighing. Frozen seafood enters the US market through three hard gates — spec language, certification files, cold-chain accountability — and price is only the last.
The spec language US buyers expect
- Freeze format: IQF (individually quick frozen) serves retail and food-service portions; block-frozen serves reprocessing and bulk catering — the same fish frozen two ways is two markets at two prices, and the quote sheet says which
- Honest glazing: US convention prices and labels on net weight after deglazing; the glazing percentage goes plainly on the spec sheet and carton. Selling ice as fish earns a short-weight claim plus a possible misbranding finding
- Grading and cuts: fillet, H&G, whole round, with per-pound counts or gram bands (3–5 oz, 5–7 oz) — the shared vocabulary of American procurement; the cleaner your bands, the easier you fit a large buyer’s spec book
- Additives and phosphates: soaking treatments (STPP) must be disclosed — treated product labels and weighs differently, and concealment is a high-risk exam item
Certification: files clear before fish does
The US regime centers on Seafood HACCP: the importer must show the foreign plant runs a HACCP plan, so your factory keeps the plan, CCP monitoring records and sanitation SOPs ready — the full picture in the Seafood HACCP article. FDA samples at the border for drug residues, histamine and microbiology, and a product line on an Import Alert faces automatic detention with the burden reversed — one violation shadows the whole line. Some live and specific items add quarantine paperwork — the APHIS article sorts which.
Cold chain: when it breaks, point to the leg
Minus 18 all the way is the floor; disputes are never about the standard but about which leg broke it and whose it was. Pre-cooling records at the plant, box and product temperatures at stuffing, the voyage curve, the devanning window at destination — every leg keeps a pullable record (the responsibility map; reefer operations). And buyers accept on probed product temperature, not the unit display — write that into the contract first.
Pricing: work backward from landed cost
After the trade agreement, seafood reads as an advantaged category with orders in species like Taiwan tilapia recovering — but each item’s rate follows its own classification and current publications; verify before quoting, never price off a headline. The correct order runs backward: start at the US channel’s target retail, subtract channel margin, importer margin, duty and clearance, ocean freight and cold storage — what remains is your FOB room. Costing forward (“cost plus”) usually quotes you out of either profit or competitiveness. Freight and cold-storage shares vary by container and lane — send the specs and destination port for a live calculation; rates on request.
Where SKYCARGO fits
SKYCARGO INC runs frozen seafood end to end — reefer booking and stowage discipline, HACCP document flow, cold-chain warehousing and distribution. (Personal shipments: Shiptw.)
Rates, tolerances and requirements follow current publications; verify per item before quoting. Reference only.
