Moscow's freshfrozen fish market witnessing mixed trends of brisk sales and setbacks

As per the fourth week of April 2009 trade in freshfrozen seafood in Moscow has shown mixed price trends, analysts of www.fishnet-russia.com (www.fishnet.ru) concluded after analyzing the current situation on the market.

As one of the most important events of the week, the shortage of Pacific salmons has been growing on the market along with rising prices and a collapse of the salted salmon roe market. There has also been a fairly strong demand and brisk sales of fish of the average price segment such as flounder, saury, herring, blue whiting, etc. The prices for pollock, capelin, blue whiting and mackerel have been decreasing.

Russia's Pollock Association has summarized results of the pollock season in the Sea of Okhotsk. The dedicated pollock fishery in the subareas of the Sea of Okhotsk was conducted from 1 January 2009 to 19 April 2009. The total harvest of pollock amounted to 620,530 tonnes, 44,606 tonnes up on the corresponding result of 2008.

The pollock quota remainder in the Sea of Okhotsk amounts to 188,801 tonnes, which will be covered during the B season. The total distribution of the catches between the seasons A and B in the Sea of Okhotsk therefore amounts to 76.7% and 23.3% correspondingly thus exceeding the forecast of 70% to 30%.

Another important development is that the largest associations, companies and firms in Murmansk have united into Sevryba Coordination Council towards mutual elaboration and solving of urgent problems in the fishery industry development. The established Coordination Council includes Murmansk Trawl Fleet Consortium, Non-Commercial Organization Union of Fishermen of the North, Non-Commercial Organization Barents Sea Fish Processing Association from Murmansk, OAO Arkhangelsk Trawl Fleet from Arkhangelsk, and NP Fishermen's Association North-West from Karelia. Sevryba's member associations and unions operate ca.150 fishing vessels, more than 30 fish processing onshore companies and firms harvest and process more than 600,000 tonnes of finfish, shellfish, mollusks and other aquatic species which makes 80% of the annual harvest and production in Murmansk-led North Basin.

In her interview with Expert Magazine, Nadezhda Kopytina, President of Ledovo Group of Companies, one of the conspicuous producers of frozen food products, seafood inclusive, has confirmed that the group has been facing problems. In particular, in the beginning of the current year 2009 Ledovo failed to pay off its debt to Svedbank and Sberbank, with the total debt amounting to ca.300 million RUB.