Marine Harvest Spain expects the country’s short-term salmon consumption to jump 10 to 20 percent accompanied by a companywide production increase from 360,000 in 2011 to 380,000 metric tons in 2012.
The news is encouraging, especially after the world’s largest salmon farmer warned of a “challenging market” ahead in releasing its first-quarter results last week.
Marine Harvest cited a 34 percent drop in first-quarter salmon prices as positively impacting salmon consumption in Spain. Reduced consumption of other types of seafood combined with better access to raw materials is creating favorable future market conditions in the country, it said. The company attributes the production growth mainly to Chile’s recovery from the infectious salmon anemia outbreak of 2007 and 2008.
Speaking to SeafoodSource, Marine Harvest highlighted Spain as the world’s second largest seafood consumer, consuming 40,000 metric tons its fresh salmon annually.
Marine Harvest Spain is part of Marine Harvest VAP Europe, Spain and Portugal. Spain is also the destination for bulk salmon sold as fillets or head-on, gutted (HOG) fish via its Marine Harvest Norway operations.
