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New Bedford seafood exports satisfy European market
Weak Dollar Boosts MA Exports
By Curt Nickisch
WBUR, National Public Radio
 BOSTON,
Mass. - March 13, 2008 - As a recession appears
increasingly likely nationally, Massachusetts businesses
are battening down to wait out the storm.
But more than 8,000 companies in the state are seeing
some sunshine. That's because they export products and
services to foreign markets.
As WBUR's Curt Nickisch reports, with the dollar at
historic lows, some are selling more than ever.
TEXT OF STORY:
CURT NICKISCH: In a seafood processing plant in New
Bedford, a conveyor belt is dropping the meaty tails of
monkfish -- about three pounds each - into a tub of
disinfectant.
SOUND OF FISH SPLASHING INTO TUB
Walt Barrett, the general manager of this plant, is
watching workers clean and pack the monkfish on ice in
Styrofoam crates.
WALT BARRETT: These are going to go to our freight
forwarder in Lynn and then will be shipped out of Logan
airport later this afternoon. These are being shipped to
the Netherlands, to Amsterdam.
NICKISCH: Today's other orders for Seatrade -- that's
the company that owns this plant - are going to France
and Russia. It's Barrett's job to figure how to combine
the shipments to save on freight costs.
NICKISCH: So you do that math.
BARRETT: Yes.
NICKISCH: And have you been doing a lot of currency
conversion lately too?
BARRETT: They sure do in Europe when they look at our
price here, and then they put it into Euros. They sort
of like what they're seeing right now.
NICKISCH: They like what they're seeing, because the
value of the dollar has been dropping hard. It's fallen
five percent against the Euro already this year -- to a
record low. That makes seafood priced in dollars
relatively cheap for Europeans. Barrett says foreign
demand is rising just in time, because US restaurants
are now buying less fish in a weaker economy here.
BARRETT: The export market is a more significant part of
our total business now.
NICKISCH: Seafood is not the only Massachusetts industry
getting a boost from exports. Take Hydrocision, a
medical device company in Billerica. Sandy von
Stackelberg heads the company's international sales and
just negotiated a new deal. The foreign distributor
asked for a twenty-five percent discount. To which von
Stackelberg replied the dollar alone has fallen
twenty-five percent in just over two years.
SANDY VON STACKELBERG: Sort of stopped him in his
tracks. And I think he then sort of recalculated
everything else he was going to buy and decided to buy
more!
NICKISCH: Statewide, exports have risen an average of
ten percent a year over the last four years. Paula
Murphy heads the state government office that helps
companies sell their stuff abroad. Lately, she's been
getting call after call from companies wanting to cash
in on the weak currency. But Murphy says it might be too
late.
PAULA MURPHY: Exporting is definitely a long term
venture. If you're going to begin looking into selling
overseas for the first time or even getting into a new
country for the first time, you're looking at a lead
time of one to two years before you're going to start to
see any sort of significant return on that effort.
NICKISCH: But those companies that got into exporting a
few years back are seeing the payoff now. One of them is
Health Enterprises in North Attleboro. The manufacturer
sells low-tech products to pharmacies.
BROOKE FISHBACK: Plastic pillboxes and organizers, pill
splitters, hot and cold therapy bracelets, finger
splints, travel bands and earplugs.
NICKISCH: International sales manager Brooke Fishback
says his company is selling three times as much of those
items overseas than it did just three years ago. Still,
Health Enterprises is not raking in export profits as
much as other companies, because the fuel costs for such
high volume shipping have been going up. So Fishback
says the dollar's decline has basically cancelled that
out.
FISHBACK: More or less. The reality is when someone
purchases our products, their concern is not what we say
the price is, but what it is for them to bring it into
their warehouse facility in the country where they do
business.
NICKISCH: Overseas sales now make up twenty percent of
Health Enterprises' business, helping diversify risk as
the domestic economy turns sour.
So in seafood, high-tech, and even low-end
manufacturing, exports driven by the weak dollar are
throwing Massachusetts companies a life raft.
In all, the US Commerce Department says about six
percent of private sector workers in Massachusetts have
exports to thank for their salaries.
For WBUR, I'm Curt Nickisch. |
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