Despite higher prices due to rising costs and some tightness in supply, fresh tilapia fillets remain a relative bargain in the seafood case in the U.S. market, even though prices are up by one-third over the past few years.
“Supply is tight, but the relationship I have with my vendor is good. I'm OK supply-wise but I had to raise my retail price, which I hadn't done in quite a while,” said a seafood buyer for one East Coast retail chain. “We are selling it for USD 8.99 a pound for fresh fillets, so we raised it a dollar. The cost went up because the supply is tight.”
The buyer is not sure why supply is tight, saying he “couldn't get a straight answer” from suppliers. “But I know they're not giving me a line of bull because everyone else is saying the same thing,” he said. “I really don't know for sure, they were just saying supply is an issue, so I don't know if there's fewer people farming, or they lost some [fish].”
The buyer expects supplies for fresh fillets from Central America to be tight at least through the summer and said the impact of the price increase on sales has been light.
“When it comes to seafood, our customers have gone through a lot these last three years … that USD 8.99 is a relative bargain compared to fresh-cut lemon sole, gray sole, flounder and everything else. They look at all that stuff versus an USD 8.99 fillet and it looks OK.”
An executive with a leading fresh tilapia supplier said while prices have been at record highs throughout Lent, supply has been stable. “There might be some minor interruptions on any given week just because too many people might be on ad throughout the country, so everybody ends up tight, but demand is being filled,” he said.
Prices for smaller-sized tilapia are starting at around USD 4.10 a pound, and going as high as USD 4.50 a pound. Despite these record-high prices, the supplier said demand remains steady. While consumers may not be eating tilapia as much as they did when it was retailing for USD 5.99 a pound — or being showcased in supermarket circulars for USD 3.99 a pound — they still are keeping it in their dinner rotations because it remains a relative value compared to other fish in the fresh case.
In summers past, demand for tilapia would drop dramatically, but the supplier said growers have adjusted their production and this hasn't been the case the last couple of years, though it remains well below what production is during Lent. Sales also are being helped by earlier back-to-school dates, which cut short the time families spend grilling meat or other species such as swordfish or salmon.
With new production starting up in Mexico, supplies should loosen up once growers there work out the kinks in their new operations. Also, as demand grows in places like China and Brazil and more production from those countries go to domestic markets, and as more U.S. retailers shy away from frozen product from China, demand for fresh tilapia from the Americas — now at around 1.2 million pounds a week — will continue to rise, said the supplier.
