News / Slow boat to China for salmon
THE SHETLAND salmon industry has welcomed a trade deal between Scotland and China, saying it could help maintain high prices over the next few years while production expands by more than a third.
The price of salmon has been at an all time high of around £4 a kilo since disease problems in Chile brought US buyers to Scotland and Norway looking to feed their appetite for farmed fish.
Meanwhile growing demand in Europe, particularly from France, shows no signs of abating.
The Scottish industry had already been planning to expand current production of around 140,000 tonnes – half of which is exported – by a further 50,000 tonnes over the next few years.
However such increases will struggle to meet potential demand from such an enormous market as China, which is already importing 217,000 tonnes of salmon products every year – 150 per cent of total Scottish production.
Last year Scottish salmon exports to China rose by 42 per cent to more than 8,000 tonnes.
Shetland Aquaculture general manager David Sandison said the industry had learned the dangers of rapid expansion from the problems it experienced 10 years ago, when rising production led to a price collapse that saw all but the largest businesses survive.
Shetland experienced a huge loss of confidence in the industry when several salmon firms went under, losing several millions from the public purse along the way.
Mr Sandison said: “We tried rapid growth before and we didn’t make enough profit, so this time it is not going to be a rush for growth. We want to make enough profit and we think we have got the right methodology.”
Now the industry is facing the opposite problem, supply being unable to meet demand, he said.
“At the moment we are struggling to meet demand from the US, so if anything, what will happen here is that we will divert the product from a lower value market to a higher value market.”
The salmon industry is now developing the technology to move its cages further offshore, with Marine Harvest already planning large scale sites in The Minches, off Scotland’s west coast.
Last year Scottish salmon production rose by 12 per cent. Mr Sandison said production levels will grow slowly at around five to seven per cent a year over the next few years, giving time for companies to explore the new Chinese market and build up connections.
“We don’t know an awful lot about the Chinese market yet, and we need to find out how it works,” Mr Sandison said, pointing out that Norway had already expanded into the Russian market over the past few years.
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