Supply constraints, certification challenges, and changing market dynamics are prompting Nordic seafood businesses to rethink how to source sustainable fish, according to a new report from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).
MSC’s “Nordic Region: State of the Market 2026” report finds that MSC-labeled seafood volumes increased by 9 percent across Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway last year – reaching almost 95,000 metric tons (MT). However, the headline growth masks a more significant change in the way companies are managing their seafood supply chains, with species like cod losing ground to pollock and mixed whitefish and retailers increasingly switching fisheries and species.
Regarding whitefish, MSC-labeled cod volumes fell around 13 percent year over year and by approximately 25 percent compared with 2022/23, while volumes for pollock increased around 11 percent and 35 percent for mixed whitefish. Together, pollock and mixed whitefish now account for around 70 percent of Nordic MSC-labeled whitefish volume.
MSC Program Director for the Baltics and Central Europe Anna Dębicka told SeafoodSource the changes reflect both immediate economic pressures and a longer-term move toward more diversified sourcing.
“I think we are seeing both a short-term market response and a longer-term structural shift,” she said.
Reduced quotas, tighter supplies, and higher prices are making cod more difficult for retailers and processors to source, but Dębicka said she doesn’t believe diversification is simply a temporary response to higher cod prices.
Much of the growth in mixed whitefish this year has come from caviar spreads, she said, while the category also includes products such as fish fingers and surimi, where processors have greater flexibility to focus on maintaining a certified product rather than relying on a single species.
“That gives the business much more room to adapt when quotas, prices, or availability change,” Dębicka said.
Dębicka said she expects Nordic whitefish portfolios to become increasingly diverse, encompassing cod, pollock, hake, and mixed whitefish.
“That does not mean moving away from cod. Cod will remain very important, but I think the market will increasingly build around a broader portfolio of cod, pollock, hake, and mixed whitefish,” she said.
However those market shifts end up, MSC will continue to have a role in sourcing, Dębicka said.
“Our role is not to prescribe which species businesses should buy,” she said. “Our role is to provide a credible, science-based, and independently verified framework that allows the market to adapt while keeping sustainability commitments intact.”
Supply constraints weren’t the only reason for marketplace shifts. MSC’s report also gives a number of examples of species or fisheries being switched in response to certification and management issues, with Dębicka confirming that in Sweden, retailers and brands have increasingly moved away from Atlanto-Scandian herring toward MSC-labeled North Sea herring, with Lidl and IKEA among the early movers, followed more recently by ICA, Axfood, Klädesholmen, and Abba.
Similarly, in Denmark, Coop has moved its own-brand marinated herring toward certified North Sea herring, while Sæby Fiskeindustri and Dagrofa have introduced MSC-certified Chilean jack mackerel as an alternative.
“This is not theoretical substitution. It is already visible on Nordic shelves,” she said. “Companies want reliable supply, products that consumers know and like, and they want to maintain their sustainability commitments. If one fishery remains uncertified for several years, businesses will naturally start looking at other fisheries or sometimes other species.”
Dębicka said the “best outcome” remains for regulators to address management problems and maintain or regain certification.
“But if management problems remain unresolved for too long, the market will adapt. Because Nordic retailers and seafood companies have considerable purchasing influence, those commercial decisions can also send a strong signal back through the supply chain,” she said.
Meanwhile, the analysis also highlighted tuna as a contrasting example of a category where certified supply is expanding rapidly, rather than being displaced, noting that MSC-labeled tuna volumes in the Nordic markets have grown from just under 5,000 MT in 2020/21 to more than 21,000 MT, including an 18 percent increase in the latest year.
Dębicka said there is still considerable room for growth, but she expects the next phase to look different from the previous five years.
Sweden is already a mature market, with more than nine out of 10 canned tuna products sold through supermarkets carrying the MSC label, she said, adding that the opportunity is increasingly about maintaining that level while expanding certification into other formats.
Elsewhere, Finland is “particularly interesting,” with Dębicka explaining that MSC-labeled tuna volumes have more than tripled since 2021/22 and are moving beyond the traditional can into frozen products, ready meals, and pizza.
Food company Saarioinen Oy, for example, has brought the MSC label to tuna wraps and tuna pizza.
Denmark is another growth market, with MSC-labeled tuna volumes increasing 29 percent last year to around 6,700 MT.
“I see further growth coming increasingly from tuna as an ingredient across multiple categories: ready meals, convenience, food-to-go, frozen products, and pet food, rather than simply more canned tuna,” Dębicka said.
She also said the expansion of the tuna market can bring supply challenges.
“Tuna fisheries are global and complex, and continued growth depends on healthy stocks, effective harvest strategies, and strong international management,” Dębicka said. “This is also where MSC's credibility matters. Market growth is important, but it cannot come at the cost of the standard. The value of the program is precisely that retailers, brands, and consumers can trust that the same robust requirements apply even when demand is growing quickly.”
While the MSC reported market shifts and changes in retailer sourcing, it also determined that taste remains the leading purchase driver across all four markets, with price the biggest barrier to eating more seafood. At the same time, a clear majority of consumers said they believe sustainability claims should be independently verified.
Dębicka said in her view, these findings mean sustainability should increasingly be integrated into the mainstream seafood proposition rather than presented as a premium attribute requiring consumers to make a separate choice.
“Retailers should not ask consumers to choose between taste, affordability, and sustainability,” she said. “The goal should be to make the sustainable choice the normal and easy choice.”
This development, she said, is already visible in markets such as Sweden, where sustainability is increasingly embedded in mainstream retail and familiar brands, and Finland, where certified tuna is appearing in everyday convenience products. She said that is part of the practical role of the MSC label – allowing consumers to trust a sustainability claim without requiring them to understand the complexities of fisheries management.
Dębicka cautioned against seeing the 9 percent increase in MSC-labeled Nordic seafood volume as evidence consumers are seeking out and buying 9 percent more seafood, as MSC cannot precisely separate growth resulting from increased consumer demand from growth caused by a shift from non-certified to certified sourcing.
“It is clearly a combination,” she said.
The situation with Swedish herring underlines this point, Dębicka said.
Consumers were already buying herring, but retailers and brands changed where that herring was sourced. Tuna, meanwhile, illustrates genuine category expansion, with certified products entering ready meals, pizza, and food-to-go, alongside growth in pet food.
“The overall Nordic market is also becoming broader, with more than 2,000 MSC-labeled products across more than 300 brands and over 70 species,” she said.
The emergence of mixed whitefish is perhaps the clearest indication of what is changing in the MSC and sustainability landscape beneath the headline growth figure, she said.
“For processors making surimi, fish fingers, fish balls, ready meals, or pet food, the important question is increasingly not only ‘Which species do I buy?’ but ‘How do I keep this product supplied from a certified fishery?’ That creates more flexibility for the business and makes it easier to manage changes in supply while maintaining a sustainability commitment. So, I would not describe the 9 percent simply as increased consumer demand,” Dębicka said. “I see it as evidence of something broader: Certified sourcing is becoming more deeply integrated into normal business decisions across the Nordic seafood market.”
For Dębicka, this is one of the most important findings of the report.
“We are moving from sustainability being attached to individual products toward sustainability becoming part of how companies manage sourcing risk, portfolio choices, and long-term supply,” she said. “The Nordic market is very pragmatic. Companies need flexibility, but they also need credibility. What we increasingly see is businesses becoming less dependent on one species and more focused on keeping the product certified. MSC's role is to listen to the market, maintain a robust and credible science-based standard, and provide a trusted framework that allows companies to adapt.”
