SEAFOOD.COM NEWS — May 6, 2014 — The Global Seafood Expo, which used to be called the European Seafood Expo, opened today in Brussels confronting a series of themes.
On top of a lot of people's minds is the turmoil in Russia and the Ukraine. The Ukraine is becoming a more important seafood market, and the political turmoil has resulted in currency devaluation, and a threat of sanctions against Russia.
Products important to Ukraine include coldwater shrimp, salmon roe and whiting. Further, the countries borders with Russia used to be relatively open, so some products sold to Ukraine would end up in Russia without paying import duties.
Now that market is essentially closed. But most of the people we spoke with at the show selling coldwater shrimp or salmon roe said other marketing channels were opening, and that while there might be price adjustments in some markets, there is no crisis of oversupply or lack of sales outlets.
So overall, the impact of the Russian situation on the seafood industry appears to be minimal, unless a sanction regime escalates, or Russia decides to restrict certain import categories, like Norwegian salmon.
The second theme of the show is sales of hard to get products – in this case cooked and peeled shrimp. The reduction in global supplies, plus a further reduction in Canada, will bring the total global supply of coldwater shrimp down to about 235,000 tons, from around 300,000 tons. In the Newfoundland inshore fishery totals will go down from 108 million pounds of raw material to 80 million pounds.
So there is competition and price pressure to secure supplies of cooked and peeled shrimp. Much of the Canadian offshore industry is either banned from selling to Russia, or the factory ships are on planned maintenace, so there is little immediate prospect of offshore shrimp entering the cooked and peeled market as twice frozen shrimp in the near term.
Also there are products that stable and abundant. Cod for example, is stable, although the Russian and Norwegian producers are pushing hard to increase the price of H&G cod. There has been a shift in production to more frozen at sea fillets for processing in China, as opposed to H&G, but these may be flowing to new markets as there are some reports that imports to China have declined. The key development in the cod market in Europe is the growth of fresh sales of cod – from Norway and Iceland to the UK, and as a byproduct there will be more production of single frozen cod as well as the same plants can freeze product that does not go into the fresh market.
The third theme – and a perennial one- is Asia. There are far more Chinese companies at the show this year, as more and more are seeking to sell direct. Also Chinese companies are seeking investment partners in Europe, and also sourcing for their domestic market.
In some ways this could be called the Asian seafood show in Europe – something I am sure was on the minds Diversified as they changed the name.
All in all it seems that it is a normal and positive year in the seafood markets, with producers having more pricing power in some situations, but not in all. As a result the year looks to be difficult for sales personnel who will be forced to market some products at high prices dictated by producers – i.e. working more to convince buyers to take this product, and also they will be asked to try and get more money for certain standard products – as processing plants face margin pressure.
This year Brussels is neither a buyers or sellers show, but instead a sales show where the work of the people actually selling seafood will make the most difference this year in terms of finding suitable homes for products, and maintaining or extending current pricing.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.