Belarusian trout producer runs out of fish

The ‘Santa Bremor’ company from Belarus, which produces fish products under the ‘Russian Sea’ brand, has temporarily stopped supplying red fish products to shops and supermarkets.  In particular, trout and salmon have ceased to appear on the company's Internet websites.  Some sources suggest that the organization lacks a raw material base, others associate it with rising product prices.

According to the experts interviewed by Kommersant media outlet, the root of the problem may lie in the sphere of geopolitical conflicts. Producers in Belarus could buy salmon fish from Norway, the supply of which to the Russian Federation was embargoed in 2014.

Such a way of circumventing the bans might have continued to exist if it were not for the start of a special military operation that the Russian authorities began to carry out in Ukraine. As a result, the Faroese salmon turned out to be unavailable, and now ‘Santa Bremor’ will have to think about the supply of fish from Russia, where competition is quite high, and the company may lose a significant market share.

Market analysts note that the situation with fish processing in Russia does not give rise to optimism. Processors in the Russian Federation are still operating on existing stocks of raw materials. Some of them buy fish in the Far East or from the farmers in Murmansk and Karelia.

Difficulties with payment and logistics operations are already tangible.

According to the head of the Fish Union, Alexander Panin, the cost of Chilean salmon in the first three months of 2022 increased by a third. Now it is sold at a price of $6.77 per 1 kg. The volume of deliveries from abroad in such a situation will be reduced, and Russian processors will have to work mainly with Russian fish.

We should recall that according to the report of the ‘Russian Aquaculture’ company in 2020, the volume of the red fish market in Russia reached 114 thousand tons. 99 thousand tons out of them accounted for products imported from abroad.