GSMC

At the beginning of the panel on premium finfish at the 2019 Global Seafood Market Conference in Coronado, California, on 15 January, moderator Derek Figueroa, the chief operating officer of Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.-based Seattle Fish Company, flashed a slide with the definition of both “premium” and “premium seafood.”

• Premium: Noun – a high-value or a value in excess of that normally or usually expected. Adjective

The reign of canned tuna in the shelf-stable seafood market may be slipping as tuna pouches gain more and more share of the market. 

Tuna pouches now make up just over 16 percent of the shelf-stable seafood market, a market which accounts for USD 2.3 billion (EUR 2 billion) in sales. That percentage means tuna pouches now make up a larger dollar-share of the segment than sardines and salmon combined. 

In 2018, the shelf-stable market

While almost half of all Americans eat little to no seafood, many Americans love the stuff – and are willing to spend more time shopping for it and more money to buy it so they can eat it regularly.

The Food Marketing Institute’s first-ever Power of Seafood survey of more than 2,000 U.S. shoppers found numerous reasons as to why more Americans aren’t buying seafood, and discovered hurdles preventing even the most ardent fans of

Haddock, a species that for decades has largely been popular in New England and the Middle Atlantic, is starting to proliferate down the U.S. East Coast, according to the latest data. 

Broadline sales of haddock increased in nearly every U.S. market between 2016 and 2018. At the low end, sales in the “East North Central” area stayed relatively flat, while sales in the West South Central region of the U.S. (Texas, Oklahoma,

Trends indicate that Americans are spending more and more of their money on eating out, and an increasing proportion of the ever-larger restaurant spend is being done at fast-casual establishments.

Starting in 2010, Americans' total spending on food away-from-home started to pull away from spending on food prepared and eaten at home, to the point that Americans spent USD 100 billion (EUR 88 billion) more on eating out in 2017 than on food at

Catch totals for Chilean sea bass remained steady in 2018, allowing for prices to level off below the all-time highs of 2017, when an eight-ounce portion was selling for upwards of USD 21.00 (EUR 18.43).

Chilean sea bass, or Patagonian toothfish, is caught the lower latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Catches have been stable at around 30,000 metric tons (MT) annually since 2014, with 30,439 (MT) caught in 2017 and 29,761 MT landed in 2018,

The glut in the global supply of shrimp that persisted throughout 2018 will remain in 2019, as cold storage facilities in the United States continue to have supplies lasting months in storage. 

A panel of experts at the Global Seafood Market Conference in Coronado, California on 17 January said cold storage facilities in the U.S. had, at times, 30 percent more shrimp in storage in 2018 than they did in 2017.

In addition, the panel predicted

Demand for salmon continues to be strong globally, but the dual markets of the United States and China have salmon sellers licking their lips at the massive opportunity they represent.

Salmon’s position as a healthy staple is driving interest in the species worldwide, but the low rates of per capita consumption in the U.S. and China show that there’s still plenty of room to grow the markets in both countries, a panel of salmon

Maine’s lobster harvest was up slightly in 2018, but didn’t match the total of the record-setting 2016 season.

Fishermen in Maine landed a little over 110.8 million pounds (50,258 metric tons – MT) of lobster in 2017, after landing an all-time high of nearly 131 million pounds in 2016. Anecdotal data shared at the 2019 Global Seafood Market Conference revealed that the 2018 catch total finished at around 119 million

A recurring theme at the 2019 Global Seafood Market Conference, taking place from 15 to 17 January in Coronado, California, U.S.A., has been China’s dominance in the skilled processing sector, and whether rising labor costs would push that processing elsewhere. 

A burgeoning middle class in China has steadily driven up the labor costs for skilled processing, particularly in the large groundfish processing sector. The trade for