Norway’s exports of whole fresh and frozen salmon maintained a downward trend in the first week of May, while fillet sales continued to move in the opposite direction, according to new analysis from the Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC).
NSC’s latest update on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country’s seafood exports finds there has been an increased shift in salmon exports towards processed products throughout the crisis. In week 19, there was a 2 percent decrease in overseas sales of whole fresh salmon to 16,004 metric tons (MT), while the frozen whole salmon trade slipped 1 percent to 213 MT. At the same time, exports of fresh and frozen salmon fillets increased by 16 percent and 105 percent, respectively.
Cumulatively, 22,645 MT of salmon was exported over the seven-day period, representing a rise of 4 percent year-on-year.
The average export price for whole fresh salmon that week was NOK 54.89 (USD 5.39, EUR 4.99) per kilogram, a decrease of 11 percent from the same week last year. Trout prices fell by 23 percent to NOK 46.21 (USD 4.54, EUR 4.20) per kilogram.
NSC analyst Paul Aandahl highlighted 20 percent growth in exports to the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, while exports to Italy declined by 29 percent and to Lithuania by 31 percent. Exports of whole fresh salmon to France decreased by 6 percent, while exports of fresh fillets fell by 8 percent, compared with the same week last year.
Exports of whole fresh salmon to Asia increased by 1 percent in week 19 of 2020.
“Three markets in particular have stood out positively recently: China, Hong Kong, and Israel,” Aandahl said. “Exports of fresh salmon fillets to Israel have increased by 144 percent from week 10 to week 19. For fresh whole salmon, however, there was a decrease of 14 percent. Exports to Israel overall for fresh salmon, whole, and fillet, the increase was 28 percent in the last 10 weeks to 2,561 MT.”
Victoria Braathen, NSC’s fisheries envoy to China, said the country has begun to increase its demand for salmon.
“The Chinese market is going very well for Norwegian salmon, with a growth of 44 percent in the last six weeks. This may show an underlying stronger demand than was the expectation for 2020,” Braathen said.
In the whitefish trade, Norway’s exports of fresh whole cod have declined by 1 percent this year, with an 8 percent drop during the coronavirus outbreak (weeks 9 to 19). However, in week 19, the country’s fresh cod sales increased by 60 percent to 1,055 MT.
Whole frozen cod sales, meanwhile, have fallen 2 percent so far in 2020, but increased by 16 percent between weeks 9 to 19. In week 19, whole frozen cod exports increased by 3 percent year-on-year. For the same seven days, exports of frozen filleted, both block and non-block, increased by 208 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
The average export price for fresh whole cod fell by 6 percent to NOK 33.70 (USD 3.31, EUR 3.06) per kilogram in week 19 compared to the same week last year, with NSC analyst Ingrid Kristine Pettersen explaining that this was a “significant fall” from the high prices seen earlier this year “before the corona period occurred,” and is despite a substantial weakening of the Norwegian krone.
“The impression is that the fresh cod mainly goes to the processing market. The explanation is increased turnover of particularly frozen, processed, or pre-packaged products for grocery in several markets. This is also reflected in the growth in exports of frozen fillet products from Norway, which have been growing for several weeks," Pettersen said.
In the first quarter of this year, Norway’s seafood exporters sold 664,000 MT of fisheries and aquaculture products worth NOK 28.6 billion (USD 2.8 billion, EUR 2.6 billion) to overseas markets.
Photo courtesy of TY Lim/Shutterstock
