Still more fillets for the USA
Looking back at the numbers and glimpsing the first results of this semester, the sales success of salmon fillets for the USA seems to have no limit. In a statistics brief by Aqua.cl, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the U.S. recently posted the results of this semester’s seafood imports, showing that once again an increase of over 20% in sales compared to the same period in 2006. Last year the U.S. imported 36.6 thousand tons of Chilean salmon fillets that generated US$ 262 million in sales. This year the country imported 39.4 thousand tons, which generated US$ 320 million. That is an 8% increase in volume and a 22% increase in sales. However, AquaChile’s general manager Alfonso Márquez de la Plata has a realistic outlook on what lies ahead. As stated recently in an interview with El Mercurio, “We [the salmon industry] are reaching the end of a spectacular 3 years of record prices across the globe, and this next semester we estimate that the prices will begin to decline; since there will be more production volume coming mainly from Norway.” Following Chile, the U.S. imports of salmon fillets from other countries are as follows: Canada, 1.7 thousand tons with US$ 18 million in sales; Norway, 1.2 thousand tons with US$ 9.7 million; and the UK, with 1.1 thousand tons and US$ 6.9 million in sales.
