SPIMEX ready to launch constant seafood trading - managing director

MOSCOW. Jan 13 (Interfax) - The St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX), which launched a pilot for seafood trading in March 2021, is ready to start trading in the commodity on a regular basis, SPIMEX Managing Director Alexei Ryzhikov said.

"In regard to bioresources, the experiment continues, there were transactions, the volumes are not big yet. But the mechanism has been trialed, and we are ready to start trading," Ryzhikov said.

Efforts during the post-pilot period were aimed at "trialing and interacting with a particular seller, building logistical chains, explaining how the exchange works, and what is happening to it," he said.

The development of market trading in bioresources will be helped by a government-approved 2030 fishing industry development strategy, he said. "One of its constituent elements is to develop commodity trading. And we hope that the issuance of relevant government resolutions meant to stimulate the development and implementation of this program will help organize trade in bioresources. For ourselves, we have settled on frozen pollock, salmon, herring and haddock as the primary commodities," the SPIMEX director said.

Efforts are underway to trial mechanisms for organizing trading in other agricultural products and foodstuffs as well, he added.

SPIMEX is Russia's biggest commodity exchange, which organizes trading in petroleum products, crude oil, natural gas, LPG, timber and construction materials, mineral fertilizers, and on the forward market. The marketplace was formed in 2008.