Salmon buyer says it’s hard to forecast.
Last week, Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Christian Nordby said he reckoned that fish farmers are unlikely to be able to produce enough salmon to meet higher demand.
The result is likely to be several years of salmon prices above EUR 6 a kilo, he predicted.
For buyers and sellers in the UK, the return to some sort of normality may be on the cards as the government recently announced that it plans on lifting remaining Covid restrictions in England in a “move away from legal restrictions”.
On HORECA markets, Cliff Oldroyd sales manager at Le Lien, a major UK importer which brings over 15,000 tonnes of fresh, multiples species of fish weekly, said that hospitality picking up.
“It’s picking up and hopefully, it’ll pick up, but it all depends what’s going on? The minute Wimbledon or the football is on, sometimes that’ll make customers busier depending on what they doing. I would be skeptical about people saying that the price gonna go through the roof, it might go up for a little while, it’ll fluctuate all the time, there too many factors,” said salmon specialist Oldroyd.
On the price, he said it goes up and down “like a fiddler’s elbow”, it’s so volatile, it’s very difficult to forecast anything”.
As far as any long-term views he said: “I wouldn’t say, either way, all I can do, is tell you what it is next week. Beyond that, I’ve stopped guessing”.
One buyer who did not want to be named, who supplies salmon to the UK’s HORECA, said it was a guess at this stage and that it may be up for debate that increased demand from supermarket chains as a result of Covid-19 may have permanently changed the market.
Yesterday, commercial director Andy Woods from the sushi specialist Tampopo said told SalmonBusiness that it is “slowly starting to see enquiries return”.
The company supplies Japanese food to catering companies, supermarkets, hotels and event organisers across the UK.
“And hopefully, our business will begin to resemble something of its previous size, however, we must see if customers are returning to work in meaningful numbers and are confident to venture out of the house more regularly to create purchasing opportunities,” added Woods.
