Lobsters nearly bankrupted Netuno USA, which explains the seafood importer's new fascination with cheap squid.
When the economy crashed in the fall of 2008, Netuno had about $5 million worth of Brazilian lobster tails in its warehouse freezers. Prices had been dropping for a year as the housing market melted down, and now Netuno would be lucky to get $3 million for it.
“It got pretty damn ugly,'' partner Luciano Bonaldo recalled. “We had lobster for so long. . . . It was the guilty pleasure nobody wanted.''
Now Bonaldo paints a far prettier picture of Netuno's prospects, largely thanks to ditching pricey lobsters for calamari imported from China and India.
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