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How to compare frozen shrimp quotes once you strip out the ice

September 26, 2026

Two Vietnamese plants quote you on the same species and the same size grade. One is 6 percent cheaper. You take it, and the container that arrives holds less shrimp than the more expensive offer would have delivered.

Nothing dishonest necessarily happened. The two quotes were written on different bases, and nobody normalised them. This guide covers the three adjustments that make frozen shrimp quotes comparable: glaze, net weight and yield.

Glaze is real protection, not just water

Glaze is a thin layer of ice applied to frozen shrimp, usually by dipping or spraying after freezing. It is not a trick. It seals the surface against oxygen and stops dehydration and freezer burn during months of cold storage and weeks of ocean transit. Product with no glaze at all arrives looking tired.

Glaze is expressed as a percentage of the gross frozen weight. Common export levels run 10 to 20 percent, and the right number depends on how long the product will sit and how it will be handled. A fast moving foodservice line can take 10 percent. Product heading into long retail storage often carries more.

The problem is never the ice. The problem is ice priced as shrimp.

The arithmetic that makes a cheap quote expensive

Take two offers on vannamei 21/25 HLSO IQF.

• Plant A: 8.60 USD per kg, 20 percent glaze, priced on gross weight.
• Plant B: 9.10 USD per kg, 10 percent glaze, priced on gross weight.

Plant A looks 5.5 percent cheaper. Now convert both to a price per kilogram of actual shrimp:

• Plant A: one kg gross holds 0.80 kg shrimp. 8.60 / 0.80 = 10.75 USD per kg of shrimp.
• Plant B: one kg gross holds 0.90 kg shrimp. 9.10 / 0.90 = 10.11 USD per kg of shrimp.

Plant B, the offer that looked more expensive, is 6 percent cheaper on the thing you are actually buying. On a 25 tonne container that difference is substantial, and it was invisible in the headline number.

The fix is one line in your enquiry: all prices to be quoted per kilogram net weight, glaze excluded, with the glaze percentage stated. That single sentence removes the entire category of problem.

Yield loss by processing form

The second adjustment matters when you are comparing formats rather than plants, or when you are deciding whether to buy shell on and peel locally.

Each processing step removes weight. The heads are roughly a third of a whole shrimp. The shell is roughly another tenth of what remains. Approximate yields, taking head on shell on as the starting point:

Form	Approximate yield from HOSO	What was removed
HOSO	100 percent	Nothing, head on shell on
HLSO	62 to 68 percent	Head
EZ-peel	60 to 66 percent	Head, shell scored
PUD	52 to 58 percent	Head and shell, not deveined
PD	50 to 56 percent	Head, shell, vein
PDTO	52 to 58 percent	Head, shell, vein, tail retained
Cooked PD	42 to 50 percent	As PD, plus cooking loss

These are working ranges, not constants. Actual yield moves with size grade, because larger shrimp have proportionally more meat, and with the plant’s own line and labour standard.

The practical use is simple. A HOSO price and a PD price are not comparable per kilogram. Convert both to a cost per kilogram of edible meat, then add the labour and waste disposal cost of peeling at your end, and the comparison becomes honest. Buyers often find that paying a Vietnamese plant to peel is cheaper than peeling in market, and sometimes find the opposite. You cannot know which without the yield step.

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Net weight per carton

The third adjustment is the most mundane and the most likely to cause a rejected delivery.

Retail programmes specify a net weight per inner pack, commonly between 0.9 and 2 kg, inside a master carton of 10 kg or more. Foodservice runs larger. Block frozen product has its own conventions.

Two things to state explicitly:

The net weight you require, per inner and per master. A plant already running your format prices better than one reconfiguring a line, and reconfiguration is also where errors enter.

The tolerance you accept. Some variation is unavoidable. Naming the acceptable range converts an argument on arrival into a measurement.

How to write the line in your spec

Bad: “IQF vannamei 21/25, competitive price.”

Better: “Vannamei 21/25 HLSO, IQF, glaze 10 percent maximum, price quoted per kilogram net weight after deglazing, 1.8 kg net per inner, 10 x 1.8 kg per master carton, net weight tolerance plus or minus 2 percent.”

The second version cannot be answered with a number that misleads you. It also tells the plant you know the trade, which changes the quality of the offer you get back.

Verifying what you bought

Specification is worth nothing without a check. At pre-shipment inspection, and again on arrival, confirm the glaze by deglazing a sample:

1. Weigh the frozen sample as it comes from the carton.
2. Thaw under gently running cold water until the ice layer is gone but the shrimp is still firm. Do not let the shrimp itself begin to thaw through.
3. Drain on a screen for two minutes.
4. Weigh again. The weight lost, divided by the original frozen weight, is the glaze percentage.

Do this on several cartons drawn from different pallet positions, not from the top layer. One carton tells you about one carton. Confirm the count per pound on the same samples while you have them out, and you have verified the two things that carry most of the value in the container.

Where this fits

Glaze, yield and net weight are the second layer of a shrimp spec. The first layer is the size grade, which drives most of the price, and the third is the certificate set your destination market and your own buyer demand. Get all three written down and the quotes that come back are comparable on paper, which is the whole point of writing a spec at all.

To compare two quotes on one basis, see our guide to the Vietnam shrimp export price.

Send the spec with the glaze and net weight basis stated, and we will match it against processors that run it.

See also: shrimp glaze levels, net weight and the Codex deglazing method.

Frequently asked questions

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