Pricing pressure will continue to impact the global surimi market through the rest of this year and possibly into next. Buyers should expect to see price hikes between the just-ended A season and the upcoming B season.
“Globally there is not a lot of supply,” says an executive at one West Coast seafood company that specializes in surimi. The executive sees B season surimi prices climbing between 7 and 9 percent from the A season prices. “There is pricing pressure in every market. It’s not just Japan, it’s the U.S. and Europe too.”
The lack of supply comes despite reports of the best surimi volumes out of Alaska since 2006, when 76,200 tons were processed. As of the first week of April, around 73,400 tons had been processed. The A season ends in early June. The Bering Sea pollock TAC for 2014 is 1.26 million tons, of which 40 percent of the quota is allocated to the A season.
The production pressure is being caused by a lack of production of warmwater species from Southeast Asia used to make surimi. The West Coast executive said he expects prices for golden threadfin bream out of Asia — where it is known as itoyori — to climb from around JPY 380 (USD 3.74, EUR 2.75) to JPY 400 (USD 3.94, EUR 2.89) a pound or more. PBO surimi blocks of Alaska pollock were averaging about USD 2,950 (EUR 2,166) a MT at the latter stages of the A season.
Threadfin bream production has been “way off since the latter half of 2013” with no improvement expected this year, the executive said. The lack of supply has created some unusual market conditions, including Thailand becoming for the first time a net importer of surimi instead of a net exporter, the executive said, adding he didn't know what was causing the production decline.
“I’m not 100 percent sure. There is no great fisheries management data” out of Asia, he said.
Along with a decline in production, surimi prices were being impacted by a weakened yen, the currency in which surimi trades, the executive said, as the weaker yen made it uneconomical for boats to go out and harvest. Also, these same boats are used to catch shrimp, which has seen tremendous price increases, and this gives fishermen little incentive to go catch bream when shrimp prices are so high. “They’re not messing around with less-expensive species when shrimp prices are so high,” the executive said.
Whether these shortages and price increases carry over into 2015 will depend on whether supply comes back and how long it takes to rebound, and whether pollock and other species such as Pacific whiting can fill the gap, the executive said. “I don’t think it will fill the hole in 2014,” he added.
