Salmones Aysén hopes frozen salmon’s environmental footprint will win over US consumers.
Undercurrent News reports that Chilean salmon farmer Salmones Aysén, which produces 30,000 tonnes of coho a year, is ending sales of air freighted fish to the USA.
It is pinning its hopes on a new marketing campaign called “Leading the Frozen Revolution”. When travelling by boat, frozen salmon uses 20 times less C02 emissions that planes.
“We think that the US will demand more and more salmon and we absolutely believe that Chile has to go in that direction,” CEO Pablo Catjak told the publication.
“It’s going to become more of an issue in 2021. There will be fewer planes, and there will be lesser air-freight capacity, and the prices are going to skyrocket,” he added.
90 per-cent of its sashimi quality coho is exported to Asia, with just five per-cent of it going to the US market. The change in direction is geared towards gaining more American consumers.
Salmones Aysen follows Faroese salmon farmer Hiddenfjord, who announced in November that it had become the salmon industry’s first company to stop using air freight.
We see good growth in sales figures, and the product is attracting interest from new customers focusing on sustainability,” said Hiddenfjord sales director Óli Hansen at the time on the company’s new climate initiative.
