Despite prices for fresh haddock and cod fillets in New England ports dropping between USD 0.50 (EUR 0.37) and USD 1 (EUR 0.74) per pound in one two-week period, retail buyers remain spooked that prices are too high and that they won’t be able to entice customers to fork out money for these products.
Fresh haddock fillets that were selling in the low- to mid-USD 8 (EUR 5.90) range at the end of August were, by the early part of September, selling in the mid-USD 7 (EUR 5.16) range, f.o.b. New England. The same thing is happening with fresh East Coast cod, with prices for large boneless fillets moving from the mid-USD 7 range in late August to the high-USD 6 (EUR 4.43), low USD 7 area. Prices also are lower for market-sized haddock fillets both in New England and New York’s Fulton Fish Market, with early September prices in the high-USD 5 (EUR 3.69) to low-USD 6 range.
Despite the drop in prices, some East Coast retailers remain wary of getting too involved with these whitefish, fearing their customers won’t want to pay these prices.
“Haddock has been very tight for both fresh and frozen. Fresh cod has been tight but we bought a year’s supply of frozen cod from Iceland,” says the buyer for one retail chain with stores in the New England and mid-Atlantic states. “All fresh prices are up dramatically forcing us to promote frozen fillets. Customers will drop off dramatically once frozen cod reaches USD 5.99 (EUR 4.42) retail; we have seen the drop with haddock once we had to move to USD 6.99 (EUR 5.16).”
The buyer says his stores have found some success with haddock in ready-to-eat meals, which the stores heavily promote in weekly ads. “Our haddock dinner is our No. 1 dinner,” the buyer says of the deal that includes about a half-pound of haddock, an equal amount of french fries and a side of coleslaw.
Frozen haddock prices are no better, the buyer says, with prices for Norway product at just under USD 4 (EUR 2.95) a pound just after Labor Day. Frozen prices could move even higher, as there are reports of panic buying amid rumors of lower catch quotas next year for fish out of the Barents Sea. The International Council for the Exploration of the Seas is recommending a 25 percent cut in the Barents Sea haddock catch for 2014, to 150,000 metric tons (MT). If enacted, that would follow a 37 percent cut that reduced the catch to 200,000 MT for 2013 from 318,00 MT — meaning the catch would have been cut by more than half since 2012.
With fresh prices in the high-USD 7, low-USD 8 range, another buyer for a different East Coast supermarket group says that would put his retail prices at around USD 12 (EUR 8.85) a pound — more than his customers are willing to stomach. “If I get up around USD 11.99 (EUR 8.84), I can’t sell it,” the second buyer says. “Prices are through the roof. Haddock is pricing itself out of the market.”
