Overview of freshfrozen fish market of Moscow as per the second week of April 2009

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

The Federal Fisheries Agency has proposed establishment of a large company company with control stock belonging to the state, the business to be engaged in construction of coldstores of the total capacity of 175,000 tonnes to be built over four years and at the total cost of 13 billion RUB (about 384 million USD).

The National Fish Resources Company will establish OAO Russkii Holod (Russian Cold plc) with 55% state capital and smaller stocks to be distributed among five large private businesses, said Krainy. The coldstores of the total capacity of 175,000 tonnes will be built by the new company and the Agency thinks that further facilities of the total capacity of 220,000 tonnes will be constructed by private companies with government's support.

However, the market participants think that the seafood transportation problem does not actually root from the lack of coldstores. Actually they say there is no lack in new coldstores already now, as the developer companies have been actively investing into such projects, but the coldstores remained empty. Even in the regions, where the decrease is less noticeable, 50-80% of coldstore capacities are not used, while the coldstorage price has been halved.

The dedicated trawl fishery of pollock has got closed in the West Kamchatka and Kamchatka-Kurile subareas. While the pollock fishery in the Sea of Okhotsk has been continued, head of Russia's Federal Fisheries Agency Andrey Krainy has forwarded to the nation's Ministry of Justice an order about extension of the pollock fishery in the Sea of Okhotsk to 20 April 2009. The order signed on 7 April 2009 has come out as a result of appeals from the members of the Pollock Association and the conclusions made by the scientists. The need in the 10-days extension of the fishery is caused by decreased catches of pollock in the end of March and early April due to the weather conditions. Considerable worsening of the fishery situation has resulted into underexploitation of the quota with 507,000 tonnes of pollock or 80% harvested out of allowed 632,000 tonnes. A number of companies whose fleets moved to the fishing grounds in late February 2009 reported catches accounting for 60-70% of the quota. If the fishery is not extended for another 10 days, the fishing companies will bear large losses and the targeted increase of catches by 300,000 tonnes will be not reached.

The capelin fishery has been going on in the second week of April 2009. The Russian fleets' harvest by the end of March 2009 amounted to ca.75,000 tonnes or no more than 50% of the quota while the Norwegian fishermen completely exhausted their quota. Murmansk fishermen harvested 53,000 tonnes of capelin. OAO Murmansk Trawl Fleet covered 70% of its capelin quota and the Union of Fishermen of the North harvested 57% of the quota. One of the main reasons of quota underexploitation was attributed to the lack of the necessary commercial motivation of the vessels caused by the inability of the domestic market to handle such volumes. Large wholesaler companies have decreased seafood purchases 2-3 times due to the problems with borrowing the money from the banks. And retailers are unable to handle such big volumes either.

In general, Moscow's freshfrozen seafood trade has shown mixed price trends for several frozen fish products. In particular, prices have increased for pelagic species such as herring and mackerel and there has also been a slight increase of prices for pangasius, pink salmon, chum salmon and squid. In the meantime, there has been a price decrease for Norwegian salmon, pollock, blue whiting and sprat.