Britain has this year been awash with new retail campaigns aimed at influencing the seafood-buying habits of its 60 million-plus population. The most recent of these, Sainsbury’s “Switch the Fish” scheme, is aimed at getting the supermarket chain’s customers to purchase alternatives to the nation’s five most popular species: cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and shrimp. Together these account for 75 to 80 percent of total fish sales.
To bring invaluable media coverage to its program, on 17 June those Sainsbury’s customers who asked for one of the so-called “big five” species were offered alternative, considerably less-popular species such as pouting, megrim, coley, trout and mackerel for free — although it should be noted the costs were largely absorbed by suppliers to the 387-outlet retailer.
From an ecological standpoint, such efforts to encourage diverse, sustainable consumption are admirable and should be encouraged, as should the slightly older “Forever Fish” campaign, launched by Marks & Spencer (M&S) on 7 June. M&S’ GBP 3 million (EUR 3.4 million, USD 4.8 million) project — funded by its sales of carrier bags, no less — will contribute to numerous marine conservation projects, including tackling the illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing of tuna and the exploitation of East Africa’s fisheries.
But what’s widely felt is that the UK needs less of these fragmented, store-by-store initiatives and a greater coordinated, over-arching effort to shape the seafood market for the next decade and beyond.
It was therefore heartening to learn from the UK seafood authority Seafish CEO Dr. Paul Williams that driving consumption is a top priority now that the organization is fully operational once again. Buoyed by the Supreme Court ruling that Seafish’s levy collection from imported seafood products is legal and always has been legal, Williams told SeafoodSource: “The biggest area we haven’t been able to drive as we would have liked is the promotion of eating seafood. Any direct promotional work tends to be expensive, so that’s an area where we have done a lot of planning, trying to get lined up with where we want to go on it. That’s an area we’d like to get started now.
“The big thing for everyone within this industry — no matter if you’re a fisherman off Hastings beach or you’re the chief executive of Birds Eye — is people eating fish. The more people that eat seafood, the happier you’re going to be,” he continued.
On the whole, the Supreme Court’s decision seems a popular one in industry circles, particularly as it presents fresh hope for a lot of yet-to-be-revealed projects and campaigns that had been mothballed while the case was ongoing. Even companies that now have to pay the backdated levies have been in touch with Seafish with messages of support and congratulations, said a grateful Williams.
“Since March 2010 we’ve not been able to draw a levy on imports, and that’s a big chunk of our income,” he explained. “We hadn’t stopped working, but the reality was we had to cut back a lot, and it did affect us. We have done quite a lot over the last year, but not as much as we would have liked. Now we can get the money back in, get geared up and back operating at full speed. What we are going to do first is talk to the industry and get it to endorse the plans we’ve got to ensure we’re heading in the right direction.”
With regards to collecting the levies, Seafish had been warning affected businesses awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision that they should accrue the money because according to UK law — with the levy being legal, then illegal for a while, and now legal again — it has always been legal. Therefore, Seafish has a legal obligation to collect the levy.
“It’s a duty laid on Seafish by parliament to go out and collect that money,” said Williams. “Having said that, we sympathize some operations may need to discuss things with us. We don’t want to be putting any extra pressure on any business that isn’t reasonable or sustainable for them.
“I’ve been talking to the big levy-paying customers throughout the last year and I know all of them have accrued the money and all of them made it clear they were ready once the law was established to get back to paying. But I also realize that there are some smaller companies that may not have saved everything that they should, and may therefore have some issues.
“What we’ve got to do is be fair to everybody. We can’t just take the money off the big companies and not worry about the smaller ones. But we will be sympathetic and put procedures in place to help,” he continued.
Looking ahead, does Seafish expect imports to be affected now that the levy is back in place and could this be detrimental to consumption?
“While the levy is a cost, I don’t think it has much effect on the market,” responded Williams. “I think any changes that have taken place are not about the levy being there or not being there. Relatively speaking it’s a very small influence, whereas global trading conditions and sourcing costs exert much greater influences on seafood prices.”
Despite the financial constraints of the last 16 months, Seafish still managed to provide GBP 4 million (EUR 4.5 million, USD 6.5 million) of value to the industry over the last year despite its income dropping to GBP 2 million (EUR 2.2 million, USD 3.2 million). Already, as reported on SeafoodSource last week, the Seafish board will also be looking at projects that have been reviewed and approved for funding from its Industry Project Fund. This support fund has a war chest of approximately GBP 1 million (EUR 1.1 million, USD 1.6 million) per year.
Clearly hoping to make up for lost time, Seafish’s next steps will be watched closely by expectant seafood ventures and stakeholders both inside and outside the UK.
