Saving Seafood

Pacific Seafood launching value-added products for Amazon Go

May 11, 2021 — Now that COVID-19 outbreaks are under control at Pacific Seafood, the supplier is turning its attention to launching unique value-added seafood items with partners such as Amazon and Pac-12 university football and basketball.

In March, the Clackamas, Oregon-based company’s processing plant in Warrenton, Oregon, U.S.A had its third outbreak of COVID-19 in the past year. Last September, nearly 100 of Pacific’s employees at its Warrenton facility tested positive for COVID-19, four months after more than 130 employees tested positive for the coronavirus among its five plants in the area.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US grocery outlook bright, with Amazon set to overtake Walmart as largest retailer

May 3, 2021 — The outlook for United States retailers and grocers is strong, according to National Retail Federation (NRF) Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz.

As Americans get vaccinated against COVID-19, they are developing a more positive economic outlook, and they’re visits into physical stores are rising, according to Kleinhenz. As a result, the U.S. economy is on firm footing and could see its fastest growth in more than three decades.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Consumers flowing to retailers bridging online and offline shopping experience

September 23, 2020 — Soaring e-commerce grocery sales, along with continued strong sales of fresh and frozen seafood sold in traditional retail outlets, are pointing the way forward for U.S. suppliers and distributors.

Despite the loss of much of its foodservice business since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, the seafood industry has been compensated with huge boosts in sales through both online and traditional retail arenas.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

EuroCommerce urges coastal states to negotiate quotas to retain certifications

June 24, 2020 — EuroCommerce, a European organization representing the retail and wholesale sector – with member companies including Amazon, Ahold Delhaize, Ikea, Tesco, and more – has written a letter to multiple coastal states urging speedy negotiations of fishing quotas.

The letter comes as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), along with MarinTrust – formerly IFFO RS – have suspended accreditation of multiple fisheries due to countries exceeding recommended catch limits. Disputes about catches between coastal states have led overall quotas to be set higher than the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas recommends.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaskan halibut, caught by a century-old Seattle boat, provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

April 28, 2019 — From the deck of his 106-year-old halibut schooner, undergoing a seasonal overhaul at Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle, skipper Wade Bassi has better insight than most into what’s happening at Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market, at least as pertains to the product he knows best.

While he doesn’t buy halibut much — he’s got a freezer full of it — Bassi, 43 years a fisherman, keeps an eye on how it’s handled and presented in the grocery stores and fish markets.

“When you look at nice halibut, I mean it is pure white,” he said. “And it is flaky-looking, and it is beautiful. It’s translucent. If you’ve got that in the fish market, people are going to buy it.”

A few days earlier, Whole Foods touted a rarely seen promotional price for halibut as part of its ongoing campaign to revise the grocery chain’s high-cost reputation while maintaining its image for quality and sustainability.

“Whole Foods is one of the better ones, to be honest with you,” Bassi said. “But you know, Whole Foods, whole paycheck. … They usually do charge way more for everything than anywhere else. Which really surprises me that they’re selling this for $16-something a pound, because they’re not making anything on it.”

Whole Foods’ halibut deal opens a window into Amazon’s grocery strategy as it seeks to combine the defining characteristics of each brand, leverage its juggernaut Prime membership program and take a larger share of the grocery business from competitors such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Amazon, Walmart lead new pilot e-commerce program in US

April 24, 2019 — Amazon and Walmart are participating in a United States government pilot program that allows Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to buy groceries online.

The two-year test, which recently launched in New York, allows online purchasing by SNAP households with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards issued in New York.

Amazon and Walmart will participate in the initial pilot launch on 23 April with ShopRite joining early next week. ShopRite and Amazon are providing service to the New York City area and Walmart is providing online service in upstate New York locations.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Amazon’s grocery stores may push seafood changes

March 4, 2019 — Amazon’s new venture into opening full-scale grocery stores will force a change in the way fresh seafood and other items are sold, analysts say.

On 1 March, The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon is planning to open dozens of grocery stores in several major United States cities, including Los Angeles, California.

The stores would not be the smaller, 1,800-square-foot Amazon Go concept stores that Amazon began testing last year, but rather, they will be 35,000-square-feet mainstream grocery stores. The larger size will allow Amazon to offer more variety of products – and likely lower-priced items – than Whole Foods Market stores, the Journal reported.

Existing grocery chains should be concerned by Amazon’s entrance into the market, analysts said in the article. Stock prices for Walmart, Kroger, Target, BJs, Costco, and others all sank on Friday, 1 March.

“Amazon has become one of the world’s largest retailers by driving cost out of the marketplace. Food retailers the ilk of HEB, Publix, Kroger, and Albertsons will have the most to lose as they continue to fight for dollars from the ‘middle,’” Steven Johnson, grocerant guru at consulting firm Foodservice Solutions, told SeafoodSource.

Meanwhile, value grocery chains such as Lidl, Aldi, and WinCo will likely have more growth as Amazon enters the market, according Johnson.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New Giant, Air-Breathing Fish Discovered

December 2nd, 2016 — One of the world’s largest, most endangered, and most mysterious freshwater fish has yielded a new surprise: a likely new species—and possibly several more—have been lurking in the backwaters of the Amazon.

New research published by National Geographic explorer Donald J. Stewart and colleagues L. Cynthia Watson and Annette M. Kretzer in the journal Copeia this week reveals strong genetic evidence for an unknown new species of arapaima that was found at several locations in southwestern Guyana.

Long, narrow giants, arapaimas live in tropical South America. They can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh 440 pounds. They breathe air through a primitive lung, and tend to live in oxygen-poor backwaters. (See photos of arapaimas and other megafish.)

Stewart, who is also a biology professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York, says the team sampled hundreds of the giant fish in the Essequibo and Branco River basins in Guyana, which are part of the Amazon system. They found two sets of fish with highly distinct genetic markers at three locations in the Essequibo.

The genetic markers indicate the fish have not bred across the two groups for a long time and they are likely so different that they represent distinct species, says Stewart. At least one is therefore new to science.

“If you have two types of fish swimming along together but not interbreeding that’s pretty good evidence they are new species,” Stewart explains. “But we still have to work out the details.”

Read the full story at the National Geographic