Successful market entry for pangasius and tilapia

Last year the farmed whitefish species pangasius and tilapia were making a big entrance in the British supermarket’s seafood isles, according to a market expert:

“In 2007, the UK market for pangasius reached £2.8 million and tilapia £3.1 million. Both of these species were virtually unknown in the UK last year.

“Pangasius and tilapia have a price advantage over traditional species, and have been very successful,” said Laurna Jack, Market Insight Executive for Seafish.

“If you went to the supermarket last year there was literary no pangasisus available. Now Young’s are using it and Tesco introduced it around October.

“Tilapia has been around for a couple of years, but was for a long time a specialist species only found on sale in the south-west of England. In 2007 there has been a 65% sales increase,” she says.

The drive for this increase has, according to Jack, been the problems surrounding cod fisheries.