Virus fear is offset by reduced harvesting.
“The big fish is the pressure. And then it seems like it will be a little more slaughtered next week than this week,” a buyer sums up.
He believes the spot price will move sideways – quite unchanged from last Friday.
“People work with stable prices and a little down on the big fish. I think someone will give in to that – including myself,” he tells SalmonBusiness. [factbox]
“It’s a waiting game. There is nothing happening,” says a smokehouse manager. “The fish must be taken up. But there are no customers calling for fish.”
“It’s not going up,” he says of the salmon price. “But whether is gets stable or goes down, I don’t know.”
Others are more confident in their case.
“The price is going down, but it’s hard to say how much. We are very laid back and waiting,” says one exporter.
“Customers are afraid of developments in Europe. Very nervous. People are insecure,” he points out.
“Lufthansa will put half its airplanes on the ground next week. People don’t go out to eat.”
On the other hand, the harvest volume is low. So far this year, less salmon has been exported from market leader Norway than in the same period last year.
“It hasn’t settled yet. We only have one of our two processing plants in operation, and we have only few spot trucks. But we are in a division over the price the Poles pay,” says a salesman at a larger fish farming company.
“We see a flat price on 4+ [kg]. There is nothing to suggest that there should be going down. There is little to harvest now,” he emphasizes.
“You can get a little [volume] into China, but that’s still only a fifth of what it should have been. One gets better prices on China, but there is no volume there.”
“At 4+, we know that we get NOK 68, but hope we get NOK 70.”
SalmonBusiness’ industry sources outline the following farmgate prices, for salmon to be delivered next week:
- 3-4 kg NOK 64-67 (€6.4-6.7)
- 4-5 kg NOK 67-68 (€6.7-6.8)
- 5-6 kg NOK 66-70 (€6.6-7.0)
