Clearwater Seafoods Inc.’s European business is up almost 10 per cent, despite the continent’s economic turmoil.
Lobster makes up less than 10 per cent of the Bedford company’s European business. Instead it focuses there on selling sea scallops, Argentine scallops and cold water shrimp.
“We expect difficult economic conditions to continue through the end of this year and into 2012,” CEO Ian Smith said Thursday.
“We also expect that our largest markets … France, Germany and the UK, will fare better than the average for the Euro zone.”
Clearwater’s anticipating that its “relatively small and exclusive customer base will continue to outperform their competition,” Smith said. “In fact, our business with these customers actually grew in 2011 by nearly 10 per cent in Canadian dollars, despite the difficult economic conditions in Europe.”
The company reported this fall that, in the first nine months of this year, it had $92.84 million in European sales, versus $84.7 million over the same period in 2010, a 9.6 per cent jump.
By comparison, its U.S. sales dropped by 11.6 per cent from $47.02 million in the first three quarters of 2010 to $41.54 million over the same period this year.
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