Aquaculture America 2024

February 18 - 21, 2024

San Antonio, Texas

NORWEGIAN SEAFOOD TRADE: THE ROLE OF TRADERS

Atle Oglend *, Professor,  University of Stavanger, Department of Industrial Economics, 4036 Stavanger, Norway. atle.oglend@uis.no. Phone: +4741446414

 

Frank Asche, Professor,  School of Forestry, Fisheries and Geomatics Sciences and the Global Food Systems Institute, University of Florida, USA and Department of Industrial Economics, University of Stavanger, Norway. frank.asche@ufl.edu

 

Hans Martin, Associate Professor, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway. hans-martin.straume@bi.no.



 

Norwegian seafood  trade has experienced considerable  growth over the past 15 years , led by the success of the salmon aquaculture industry. With the aim of continued growth in production, maintaining and growing the demand for seafood is crucial to maintain the value of Norwegian seafood.

 This paper investigates the role of seafood traders in Norwegian seafood export.

 Seafood traders are defined as exporting firms that trade in both wild and aquaculture products. These are dealers/merchants of  a wide portfolio of seafood, different from pure aquaculture or wild seafood exporters.

 We hypothesize that seafood traders mplay an especially important role in the growth of the industry in global    markets. They might facilitate substitution between aquaculture and wild seafood products; integrating aquaculture and wild seafood in the market. They might also help introduce new seafood products to new customers by utilizing their existing customer network in other seafood products.

 To investigate the role of seafood traders we leverage data on customs declarations for Norwegian seafood exports. Our results show that seafood traders are a minority of exporting firms, but they are large firms and account for a majority of exports. Seafood traders typically operate in higher valued species, such as salmon  and fresh white fish. We also find that seafood traders achieve a higher export price (10% premium) than comparable specialist traders. Looking at the growth of new seafood products to new markets we find that exporting firms that introduce new seafood products to markets tend to already export a different seafood product to the same market. This suggests they utilize their existing customer network to introduce new products. We also find that seafood traders introduce more new products than the specialist traders. All in all, our results suggest that seafood traders that export a wide portfolio of both wild fish a aquaculture products play an important role in both integrating different products in the market, and spreading new products to new markets.

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