No sign of rising pre-Christmas prices.
Price formation for salmon suffers from a weakened market for the Horeca segment (hotel, restaurant and catering – editor’s note).
“At best stable. Not much is happening,” said an importer to SalmonBusiness.
“There is a lot of fish coming up. The Poles do not know what to do, after a huge upswing for the corona. And there are lots of shutdowns. Right now nothing is happening. It has been quiet as the grave this week,” he said.
Freezing
At the same time, there is a lot of fish in stock – either on land or in the sea.
“It is overflowing with frozen fish in Chile. There are not many opportunities: Russia is the large freezing market, but Norway does not have access to it. Norway’s strength is Europe. Only Europe and the United States are well-functioning markets. And now they are trying to take advantage of a weak krone,” he reasoned.[factbox]
In line with an oil price that has fallen to 38 dollars a barrel, the Norwegian krone has weakened against the dollar and euro, which are currently trading at 9.49 and 11.09, respectively.
Equal price
The so-called price spread, the difference between different weight classes, has been reduced in recent weeks.
“Around 40 kroner (EUR 3.6), equal price for everything now really. No wonder, because there are so many 5+ kg. There has been a 3+ kg price since then. We see what customers are offered, there is no difference,” said an exporter.
“We have not bought that much so far. It is a very uncertain situation.”
“We must ask ourselves: Which market have we lost?” he asked rhetorically, before he himself answered: “We have lost the market that raises the price. No one should tell me that supermarket chains have ever pushed up the price.”
Contracts
“50-52 kroner (EUR 4.5-4.7) is what we can make contracts on for next year, the customers say. This is what the big customers, such as Aldi, Lidl and Rewe, say. It is a completely different climate now, to put it bluntly. And then people say: Yes, but Fish Pool says it is at 57-58 kroner (EUR 5.1-5.2) per kilogram. But it does not help, when there is no liquidity there.”
“There is a lot of 5+. Now it is the cost price level, and I think it can last a good while in the future,” he predicted.
All industrial sources agree with a message of stable prices.
In the shops
“Around 40 kroner (EUR 3.6). 3-4 kg is slightly lower. Customers are being pulled more and more towards the counter. And there is the price in focus. But the salmon is lucky – there is no other type of fish that hits so many customers with so many product variants,” said one exporter.
“No impulse,” said a trader about the salmon market. “There is a lot of 5+ kg in Norway at the moment. That price is a fight every single week. The price is stable, at best. Currency is being recorded as a thing in our favor at the moment.”
