Destabilized Supply Chain Here to Stay
The seafood industry has one of the most complex supply chains of all food commodities.
Despite the disruption caused by the global pandemic, much of our industry has thrived due to the simultaneous surge in demand for our products. The higher demand has provided the money to cover the costs of extreme disruption, whether that is freight rates and driver shortages, temporary plant closures, or lack of plant workers.
This demand surge has buffered us from the risks in our higher-cost ...
Seafood Inflation May Be Less Than Meets the Eye
In the past couple of months, several news stories have highlighted the difficulty some restaurants are having coping with higher seafood prices.
“Very few products are not going up in price,” Santa Monica Seafood President and CEO Roger O’Brien told SeafoodSource recently.
The price inflation in the distributor, processor and food service operators’ sales to foodservice customers alone was a “whopping 29 per cent” in June, O’Brien said.
This surge was a result of a ...
The Seafood Industry and the Bullwhip Effect
Seafood trading is hard when a couple of bad decisions on pricing or timing can wreck a business.
As a result, we are trained to focus on short-term problems.
Most of our time is spent managing supply, shipping and customer needs within a six-to-12-week time frame. This can obscure long-term issues that will transform our business.
The last year is a great illustration of this and we are not out of the woods yet.
When the pandemic first hit the U.S. in March of 2020, seafood prices ...
Work Together or Hang Separately, it is That Simple
Above: Lonnie Snow photo
Two qualities that give the seafood industry its unique character are being made up of a multitude of diverse companies of all sizes and having an immense diversity of species and products.
In the U.S. meat industry, four companies control 84 per cent of beef production, 65 per cent of pork production, 53 per cent of poultry and one dairy co-op and one processor control 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively of the national milk supply.
Our compan...
Industry Must Prepare as COVID-19 Changing Supply Chain Behaviour
With the spread of the coronavirus to new countries, I now believe the seafood industry is going to face its worst crisis since the economic collapse of 2008.
That was difficult and frightening enough.
From October to December of 2008, fresh whole salmon prices dropped 20 per cent. From August 2008 to January 2009, shrimp prices in the Urner Barry farmed shrimp index fell 16 per cent. Cod loins, which were at record prices in November of 2008, fell 34 per cent over the next 11 months, in ...
Fisheries Science Failures on Full Display in 3Ps Cod Projections
Cod still remains “fish” in Newfoundland and Labrador, but the optimism of growing cod stocks in the past few years has been tempered.
Newfoundland once had one of the world’s great cod stocks on the Grand Banks and in the 2J-3K NAFO area off the northeast coast of Newfoundland and off Labrador.
According to George Rose of Memorial University, one of the world’s foremost scientists on Atlantic cod, the collapse of the stock in the early 1990s was precipitated when most of the ...
Cod, Shrimp and Pangasius See Gains in U.S. Consumption
Cod is the big winner in the per capita U.S. consumption numbers, as it has taken an increased share of the whitefish market over the past five years.
The per capita consumption numbers released by the National Fisheries Institute recently showed a drop in overall U.S. seafood consumption from 15.5 to 14.9 pounds. Almost all of the drop was attributable to salmon, where consumption fell .7 pounds per person.
The NMFS model, on which NFI bases its numbers, is a disappearance model and is ...
Stronger Canadian Dollar Creating Issues For Lobster Industry
The strengthening Canadian dollar is pressuring the lobster industry.
In Nova Scotia, the season is currently closed. This means that dealers are selling off live inventory purchased at higher prices.
With the Canadian dollar dropping from $1.35 to $1.25 in late July, this is the equivalent of a seven per cent drop in money returned back to Canada, squeezing margins.
This caused the Canadian Lobster Council to warn that the country’s lobster processors were under pressure.
In New ...
Quebec Private Equity Firm Creates $140-Million Lobster and Crab Group
The Montreal-based private equity firm, Champlain Financial, has purchased Riverside Lobster of Nova Scotia and will merge the company with Cheticamp Fisheries, which it purchased in May 2017.
The primary products of Riverside and Cheticamp are lobster and snow crab.
The group will be led by Marc Poulin, formerly CEO of Sobeys, who will become the executive chairman of Champlain’s seafood platform.
“Both companies are strategically located in the most productive crab and lobster ...
Gulf Snow Crab Quota Even Higher Than Expected
The snow crab supply picture from Atlantic Canada is coming into better focus.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) announced in April that the quota in the Southern Gulf, which was 21,725 tonnes last year, will more than double to 43,822 tonnes this year.
Combined with the Newfoundland quota of 35,419 tonnes, total Canadian harvests from the two primary producing areas will total 79,241 tonnes of crab, or nearly 175 million pounds of live crab if the entire quota is caught.
In ...
Destabilized Supply Chain Here to Stay
The seafood industry has one of the most complex supply chains of all food commodities. Despite the disruption caused by the global pandemic, much of our industry has thrived due to the simultaneous surge in demand for our products. The higher demand has provided the money to cover the costs of extreme disruption, whether that is freight rates and driver shortages, temporary plant closures, or lack of plant workers. This demand surge has buffered us from the risks in our higher-cost ...