News - MARKET

Other fresh products which stopped being imported in the EU in March are fresh hake from Namibia and Chile, common sole from Iceland, fresh scallops from the USA, fresh clams from Tunisia, fresh blue mussels from Norway and fresh Nile perch fillets from Uganda. 

Online sales and home delivery of seafood products have increased rapidly during lockdown. Although from low volumes, e-commerce sales of fresh produce have increased by 25% and online takeaway deliveries have doubled, according to Rabobank analysts.

The Easter period drove up demand and prices in Italy. In week 15, prices were up in Rome wholesale market compared to week 14, especially for clam and bigger gilthead seabream but down for Tyrrhenian anchovy.

In week 15, available first-sales data for a handful of EU Member States shows increase in first-sales prices for several groundfish and flatfish species. 

The export prices for Pollock from the Russian Far East are softening, according to trading sources in Vladivostok.

In 2018 Russian companies based in Vladivostok-led Primorskiy Krai boosted shipments of animal products (inc. seafood) to South Korea, China, Japan and Singapore.

Big Swedish companies are planning to boost their purchases of finfish and seafood from the Russian Far East Fishery Basin, reports www.megafishnet.com with reference to TASS.

In 2018 Russia’s leading multiformat retailer X5 Retail Group made more contracts with foreign suppliers under the direct import program, namely the number of such contracts rose by 114 as compared to the previous year. The whole list of the retailer’s suppliers includes more than 5600 companies, reports www.megafishnet.com (welcome to our new marketplace www.impexglobal.ru).

In 2018 Murmansk-based fishing companies started to export a number of new fish products to the international market, reports www.megafishnet.com.

In the recent years Russian companies based in the Far East Fishery Basin have been boosting production of farmed Japanese sea cucumber. As a result, sea cucumber exports to the Asian Pacific countries jumped six-fold in value terms, reports www.megafishnet.com.

In 2018 Russian fishing companies harvested 1.668 million metric tons of Alaska pollock, of which 1.064 tonnes in the Sea of Okhotsk and 326,000 tonnes in the West Bering Sea zone. As compared to 2017 (1.68 million MT), the harvest declined by 1% or 11,000 tonnes, reports www.megafishnet.com.

In 2018 Russian export of wild salmons was soaring and by the end of the year exceeded USD$740 million. For comparison, Alaska pollock exports were not much ahead with ca. 1067 million USD, according to FISHNET analysts who studied customs raw data.

In 2018 the Russian Far East customs office cleared 1.5 million metric tons of seafood for export to the international market, or 9.3% up as compared to 1.41 million tonnes last year, according to the office’s head Yuri Ladynin.

Raw customs data processed by Fishnet analysts show that in the first 9 months of 2018 the Russian exports of fish & crustaceans (HSC group 03) from the customs territory (equal to land + Russian EEZs except for Barents Sea) have increased both in terms of volume and value as compared to the same period of 2017. The figures cover all exports except for the catches shipped to foreign buyers from beyond the Russian customs territory in the Barents Sea (from beyond demarcation line with Norway catches are not subject to mandatory customs clearance).

Russia’s seafood imports in the first nine months of 2018 displayed a big leap in value and a small setback in volume on the same period of 2017, according to a report prepared by Fishnet.ru analysts based on raw customs records.

Owners of land adjacent to Vladivostok Fish Port are going to commission an additional 80 thousand tonnes of coldstore facilities within the next four years to enable storage and handling of seafood from the whole of the Russian Far East, according to Russia’s fishery head Ilya Shestakov.

In order to safeguard the domestic market’s fish supply it would be best for the retail chains and the fishermen to make long term contracts to be fulfilled irrespective of the global market situation, said deputy head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries (FAF) Pyotr Savchuk in an interview with Primamedia.

In 2018 salmon roe exports from Primorye Territory (Capital Vladivostok) have sharply increased as compared to the same period last year, according to the regional office of Rosselkhoznadzor (Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance).

In the first nine months of the current year 2018 Russia’s seafood market has been showing positive trends including rising output of fish fillets and mince and increasing seafood exports. Those trends have been developing against the background of decreasing imports of seafood, according to Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries (FAF).

For the year 2015 the total value of Icelandic catch increased by 11% when compared in 2014, from 136 billion ISK to 151 billion. This was mostly due to 8 billion ISK increase in value of cod catch and 9 billion increase in catch value of capelin.

The meeting took place upon the initiative of the Indian party. The First Secretary of the Embassy of India in Russia Amit Telang expressed his satisfaction over the development of the Russian – Indian cooperation in food product export...

Upon the agreement with the Veterinary Services of Kazakhstan and Belarus from October 20 to 31 of the current year the Rosselkhoznadzor experts inspected 15 plants producing animal food products, including fish plants and pig slaughter facilities, interested in export of their products into the Customs Union...

The Rosselkhoznadzor representatives, i.e. Assistant Head Dmitry Natarov and Head of the Directorate for Veterinary Inspections within International Cooperation and WTO Vasily Lavrovsky included into the Russian delegation headed by RF Minister of Agriculture Nikolay Fyodorov took part in another session of the Russian-Moroccan Intergovernmental Commission which took place in Rabat on September 15 – 17, current year...

Sergey Dankvert noted growth of food product supply from Georgia in the first half this year...

Russia has issued the list outlining which foodstuffs it has banned from entering the country - with products from the US, the EU, Australia, Canada and Norway affected...

Russia has decided on a total one-year’s ban on food imports, including fish, from the European Union (EU), United States and some other Western countries in response to the sanctions implemented against it over the events in Ukraine...

The meeting took place upon the initiative of the Japanese party. The Rosselkhoznadzor delegation at the talks was headed by Head of the Department for Veterinary Inspections Vasily Lavrovsky and the delegation of the Japanese Embassy was headed by recently appointed Counselor, Mr. Kanji Kori...

The National Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (NAFIQAD) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam and the Fisheries Administration of Vietnam visited Russia...

The meeting took place upon the initiative of the Canadian party. Bruce Chapman informed his Russian counterpart about the Council’s plans to start working over the joint project in Russia related to catching and processing of snow crab in the Barents Sea and about the talks between the FCC and Rosrybolovstvo devoted to the exchange of fish quotas in the North Atlantic...

At the end of last week the last hold-out Japanese packers signed contracts at $4.95 (FOB) for Newfoundland Snow crab. The result was $.15 to $.20 cents higher than the Japanese had hoped...