Russian fishermen set to boost exports to Latin America - Federal Fishery Agency head
MOSCOW. Aug 1 (Interfax) - Russian fishermen will intensify relations with Latin America as they seek to expand exports.
"Most importantly, the countries with rather large amounts of fish consumption should open [to exports]. Indeed, besides our traditional importers, such as China that accounts for half of all exports, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands and Germany, we are very interested in boosting the supply to Latin America. This is what we are going to intensively work on together with fishermen," Federal Fishery Agency head Ilya Shestakov said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 television channel (VGTRK) on Thursday.
Cod is the most popular fish on that market, Shestakov said. "Cod is mainly supplied from the Northern Basin. Previously, exports went mainly to the EU. Now it is becoming less interesting for us. Pollock is caught in the Far East. For us, pollock supplies from the Far East are very important from the point of view of diversified exports," he said.
As for the outlook for this year's fish harvest, Shestakov said that the salmon catch, which the total harvest will depend on, "has not been good for now." "Unfortunately, it falls short of our expectations. But we are catching more of other fish species, including pollock and West Pacific sardines. So we believe that the harvest may be a bit smaller than last year's record [5.3 million tonnes] but still quite large for the past 30 years," Shestakov said.
The catch of West Pacific sardines may grow 20-30% this year, while the catch of pollock may grow "approximately 100 tonnes, or about 5%." "I think the additional fish to be harvested in the Far East will compensate for the insufficient catch of salmon," he said.
Aquaculture production in Russia may reach 10-15% of the wild fish catch by 2030, Shestakov said, adding that the goal is to increase aquaculture production to 600,000 tonnes this year. It stood at 402,000 tonnes in 2023 (4.8% more than in 2022).
At the same time, the production of fish feed will be actively developed. "Restrictions on feed supplies from a number of countries led to our refocusing on imports from friendly countries. Secondly, it gave a very strong impetus to investment in building domestic feed production plants," Shestakov said.
"Eight modern plants are currently under construction. We expect to meet about 40-50% [of the demand for feed] by 2025 and 80% by 2028. A large plant has been built in Belarus. Taking this into account, I think that we will be able to meet 90-100% of the demand in the next three to four years," he said.