Editor’s picks: Morpol on the move

Here’s a recap of this week’s must-read SeafoodSource news stories:

• Saturday marks the four-month anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, which triggered the worst oil spill in U.S. history and forever changed the landscape and identity of the Gulf Coast. Though the wellhead was capped about a month ago, the region’s seafood industry is still fighting the misperception among consumers that Gulf seafood is unfit for consumption. On Wednesday, Sea Grant programs from Florida to Texas launched a seafood-monitoring program expanding upon the existing HACCP system. Part of the program is deciphering information in a “readily available and easily understood” manner so that it’s simple for the average consumer to digest. Late last week, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services rolled out a Florida Gulf Safe logo, after a survey of 1,000 Florida consumers found that one in five “occasional” seafood eaters has stopped purchasing fish since the oil spill.

• This week’s most-read news story was SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Christine Blank’s Q&A with Lee French, VP of seafood merchandising for Price Chopper, with 128 supermarkets in the Northeast. French talked about Price Chopper’s sustainability efforts and about its recent decision to sell sea bream from Local Ocean in Hudson, N.Y., which applies a contained, closed-loop water system to raise the fish.

• Blank’s Q&A with Dr. Jeffrey Lotz, chairman of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Department of Coastal Sciences, was this week’s second most-read news story. Lotz talked about how advancements in aquaculture technology could eventually result in a more viable U.S. shrimp-farming industry. He also chatted about USM’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory recently producing a record number of farmed shrimp at its 18,800-square-foot facility.

• A number of seafood companies from Norway to China reported their second-quarter and first-half results this week. Icelandic GroupLerøy Seafood GroupSalMar Group and China Marine Food Group turned in particularly strong results, many of which were buoyed by an increase in farmed salmon production and prices worldwide.

• Morpol shook up the farmed-salmon scene on Wednesday when it announced the purchase of Mainstream Scotland from Norway’s Cermaq for NOK 350 million. The acquisition is Morpol’s first step into salmon farming; the Polish company is already one of the world’s largest salmon processors. Morpol CEO Jerzy Malek said the company will use the acquisition “as a platform for market penetration in the UK and French markets.” Mainstream Scotland produced 6,500 metric tons of Atlantic salmon last year.

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