With international flight restrictions now lifted following the unprecedented closure of European air space, seafood supply chains and business operations are returning to normal.
Seventeen Spanish airports closed on 18 April, though Madrid, Barcelona, Santander and Bilbao later opened their airports. Spain’s largest seafood region, Galicia, also experienced difficulties with the closure of its three airports at A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela and Vigo.
Spanish participants in next week’s European Seafood Exposition in Brussels, Belgium, are managing to weather the storm.
“We’re still aiming to fly on Monday, as we have no notification that our flights have been cancelled,” said Goretti Redeira, exposition manager at Congelados Marinos Promar in Vigo. “We’re looking forward to meeting new clients and extending our presence in Europe. Most of our products sell in Italy, Portugal and France — countries nearest to Spain — so we’re looking to expand to northern Europe, particularly Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.”
Congelados’ finfish products include cod, halibut, mackerel, mahimahi and swordfish and its shellfish products include clams, prawns and scallops.
At the height of the chaos, Joan Gimbernat, manager at EasyFish in Girona, told SeafoodSource, “It is affecting all documentary banking procedures such bill of lading, invoices, health certificates, etc. needed to clear containers on time and avoid demurrage costs. Our cargos from/to Europe and from/to China are all in refrigerated reefer containers, and, as far as I know, this is not affecting vessel routes.”
“We sell in 41 countries, mainly at room temperature but also frozen, so fortunately we had planned exports to the countries most affected,” added Isidro J. Pérez de Aragón, commercial director at Nortindal Sea Products in Guipuzcoa. “We think [the distribution of] fish and shellfish imports from northern Europe will have been a big problem.”
A spokesman for Barcelona’s seafood market, La Boqueria, told SeafoodSource, “I don’t believe we’ve seen any effect on seafood trading so far. Maybe other sellers are experiencing problems, but we’re lucky not to have seen any downside as yet.”
