The United Kingdom is one of Norway’s top markets for seafood exports, but it’s also a country that’s been gradually buying and consuming less fish, having sourced less volume of almost every species last year, according to Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) Analyst Eivind Braekkan.
Speaking at the 2024 Norway-U.K. Seafood Summit in London, England, Braekkan said the only fish import to see an increase in volume sent to the U.K. last year was pangasius. That downward demand is a major concern for Norway’s exporters, which supply around 20 percent of U.K. seafood imports annually, Braekkan said.
Since January 2021, retail food prices in the U.K. have risen 29 percent, with meat prices up 27 percent and seafood prices up 21 percent. Salmon prices are up 25 percent, the cost of cod has risen 19 percent, and haddock prices are up 18 percent.
However, higher prices caused by inflation are not solely responsible for the drop in consumption, according to Braekkan. Nor is the trend of declining seafood demand unique to the U.K.
“Declining consumption isn’t about seafood prices; it’s about everything going up,” Braekkan said. “[Consumers] are buying less seafood and all kinds of stuff, so the declining seafood consumption isn’t an issue or challenge exclusive to seafood in the U.K.”
The problem, according to Braekkan, will become exacerbated by global supply shortages in 2024. Braekkan said while farmed salmon supply will remain stable in 2024, in capture fisheries, it’s expected Atlantic cod volume will fall 17 percent to around 796,000 metric tons (MT). This includes 80,000 MT less cod from Norway due to reduced quotas. Similarly, haddock supply will decrease an estimated 14 percent to 264,000 MT.
For some species sourced from Norway, there should be global supply gaps available to be filled this year, Braekkan said. Sanctions against Russia due to the ongoing war in Ukraine have led to the U.S. banning Russian seafood, including Russian-originated seafood processed in third countries such as China, so there will be a big gap in the U.S. cod market that can be filled with cod from Norway, Iceland, and other countries, while Russian exporters must find new markets. Historically, around 90,000 MT of Russian cod have been imported annually by the United States, mainly via China.
While the U.K. hasn’t yet placed sanctions on Russian cod from third countries, Braekkan questioned whether U.K. consumers will continue to buy Russian-origin whitefish due to the unpopularity of Russia among the country's populace.
As for whether sluggish consumption trends will continue through this year, he said there’s a “slightly more positive” outlook for the U.K. market in 2024, and that this could help elevate seafood demand.
“That’s also the case for the rest of the world,” he said. “For importers, that means more competition to get your seafood, and with lower quotas for whitefish, there will be more pressure on supply chains.”
In the longer term, with the global population on course to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050 and the demand for food expected to increase by 70 percent over the same period, Braekken predicted a ...
