Island Creek Oysters of Duxbury, Massachusetts, is now exporting their live oysters to Hong Kong through a buyer who saw their fresh oysters featured in U.S. Foodlink newsletter. The company later met with the buyer one-on-one during the 2008 Focused Trade Mission to Hong Kong for Food Service (a Food Export-Midwest-sponsored event). The company expects this one sale to exceed $100,000 by the end of 2009 and grow to $350,000-400,000 within the next two years. Food Export-Northeast’s Market Builder Program also helped the company conduct market research to determine that the Hong Kong market was a fit for their product. According to Shore Gregory, Director of Business Development for Island Creek Oysters, “Our ability to create these new markets during an economic downturn has been really important in helping to sustain the workforce of our farmers.”

Island Creek Oysters, a co-op of 12 oyster farmers, sells over 100,000 of their oysters each week. Their oysters can be found on menus across the U.S., including the White House, as far north as Canada, as far south as the Caribbean, and now overseas!

Food Export-Midwest and Food Export-Northeast are private, non-profit associations of Midwestern and Northeastern state agricultural promotion agencies that use federal, state, and industry resources to promote the export of Midwestern and Northeastern food and agricultural products. Food Export-Midwest and Food Export-Northeast administer many services through Market Access Program (MAP) funding from the USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service.