Alaska pollock has made its mark as the most affordable whitefish on the market, but is not known as a high-quality fish, which is probably why it so often winds up as breaded and battered fish sticks and fish sandwiches or processed into surimi seafood.
For those buyers looking for a higher-quality pollock, it can be a tough search.
“We’re seeing a market being a bit more split in that quality divide. It’s one of those markets where people would always do short-weight products, they would give us soaked products,” says the CEO of one mid-sized seafood distributor. “It seems that they’re trying to figure out how to deliver a product that can compete in the market while they can stay relatively reasonably priced.”
While the CEO says pollock remains the “only game in town” if you are looking for a whitefish in the low-USD 1 range, he says it’s difficult to find product that is net weight or not soaked. “Because we’re looking for a particular thing,” he says, “we find it harder to source because we have to find the right guy with the right product at the right time. I think if you went out there with a line to fish for pollock, and you weren’t very discriminating, you wouldn't have much of a problem.”
The executive thinks price pressures are leading to extra soaking of product, as everyone is trying to maintain their margins. “On the once-frozen Alaskan, it seems that on a couple of sizes, the 4-6s particularly, supply seems a little tight right now. In terms of the twice-frozen product that's processed in China, what we've seen — and we basically did some recalculations based on what they’re paying for the whole fish — there’s really a price pinch there,” he says.
“Prices for the whole fish have gone up to the point where it’s not easy to sell it at the prices they are selling it in the market, so what a lot of the processors have done is they are soaking the product more heavily, so it’s very difficult to get the unsoaked or lightly soaked product.”
Prices also may be pushed up by a decline in the Alaska pollock quota, which was cut to 1.2 million metric tons for 2012, down a bit from 1.25 million metric tons in 2011 but still significantly higher than in 2010 when it was under 1 million metric tons. Some wanted a lower catch level, as the Alaskan fleet failed to catch the entire 2011 quota. The amount of Russian pollock — there were record amounts of the product the last few years — also will impact the price balance between supply and demand.
The CEO says once-frozen Alaska pollock blocks were selling for around USD 1.80 to USD 1.85 a pound last month, a bit more than the roughly USD 1.55 to USD 1.60 price reported in the first week of January. Twice-frozen blocks processed in China were selling for around USD 1.30 a pound at the start of the year. Skinless, boneless pollock fillets of all sizes, from 2-4 ounces to 8 ounces and up, all were reportedly fetching between USD 2.30 and USD 2.40 a pound. Twice-frozen fillets in sizes between 2 ounces and 8 ounces were being quoted at between USD 1.30 to USD 1.40 a pound.
