Price fall stops up

by
Aslak Berge

After a bloodbath last Friday, falling European price indicators have slowed up.

“My impression is that it’s negative out there, but fish farmers are getting onboard the little uptick,” a salmon trader told Salmon Business.

Less volume
A range of unrelated industry sources provided these prices for following-week delivery:

  • 3-4 kg, 43-45 NOK
  • 4-5 kg, 44-46 NOK
  • 5-6 kg, 46-47 NOK
  • 6+ kg, 48 NOK

“I think little has been decided, and there are some (delivery) trucks with fish slaughtered today but not yet sold. In Poland, we’ve been given an offer of one to two NOK’s lower. I’ll go ahead and say it came from some of the big distributors. So, I see a more or less sideways price movement for next week,” a fish buyer said.

“It looks like a little less volume will turn up next week. Last week it was a case of operators having to stick to the maximum allowable biomass (MAB) at month’s end. But, there’s great resistance in the market. Even now, with the price having come down, the market is reasonably difficult. You struggle to get your sales volumes out the door, even at a time when you need to secure Christmas sales — now’s when you produce it!”

Improvement
There’s no doubt the price has stopped up.

“It’s a little up from last Friday. You can track a slight improvement, but I can’t tell you right now how large it is,” an exporter said.

“I’m now getting an offer from exporters of 44.50 NOK for (3 kg to 6 kg) on fish packed Tuesday. I said no thank-you to it. I have no sale on it. I have no buyers,” another seller said.

“4.85 euro on (3 kg to  4 kg) and 4.85 euro on 4-plus kg are the sale prices. I have to buy at 42 to 43 NOK if I’m going to earn money on it,” he said, adding that 5-plus kg are what the market has been after.

“They’re cutting harvesting volumes next week. Thank for that, otherwise the price would have been 35 NOK! We have too much fish in relation to the market. We have to start working with the market. We have a job to do. Campaign! We’re freezing fish that we haven’t sold,” he said frustrated, before concluding, “At least the price is stable.”

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