Risks over Chile
The financial consulting company and security broker dealers EuroAmérica published a complete report on the local salmon industry last week. The document stresses the positive results obtained by this industry last year and interprets those improvements as signs of a recovering process. However, this report also describes four kinds of risk that could threaten the salmon industry:
Market risks: in this field, the major threat would be eventual variations in the price of the different final products, followed by higher costs on the main supplies (e.g. fishmeal and fish oil) and exchange rate volatility.
Default risks: lots of companies within this economic activity are heavily leveraged. The high levels of short term debts are the most eye-catching phenomenon in this situation.
Sanitary risks: the largest risk in this scope would be non-compliance of the sanitary measures designed for this industry with a consequently reappearance of ISA virus. Moreover, these measures should include other pathogens such as SRS, IPN, sea lice and those diseases still absent in the country, EuroAmérica commented.
Operational risks: the environmental and sanitary regulatory modifications could impact on the costs and results of the salmon producing companies. Besides, some natural phenomena such as: temperature variability at the sea, earthquakes, algae blooms and natural predators could also become risks to the growth of each company.
