In the last 12 years there have been significant changes in the industry in Iceland. The exporters have seen good times and bad. Many of the harvesters have restructured their operations and the balance sheets in response to the financial crisis of 2008/2009. Significant investments have been made in both new vessels and in new equipments such as new processing lines and automated cutting systems such as The Valka Cutter from Valka and the FleXicut from Marel. This has coincided with the emphasis on fresh exports and the markets that are fresh driven such as France and Belgium for portions and the UK and the USA for fillets.

The key question have these changes helped to improve the export value of the Icelandic cod. That is the task of the day.

The following chart shows the annual landings of Atlantic cod in Iceland for the years from 2006 to 2017.

As we can see there has been gradual improvement in the landings of Atlantic cod as the quotas have increased.

However, if we want to analyze the export value of this catch it is necessary for us to take a look at the price fluctuations for each of the main product categories as seen in the chart above.

Yet if we then try calculate the export value of this overall annual landings of the Atlantic cod we see that the value peaked in 2011 and 2012. Since 2015 the value has fallen from ISK 801,81/kg to ISK 544,13/kg based on preliminary figures for 2017. Does this then mean that all the changes in market focus and greater emphasis on fresh is not increasing the value per kg? 

To find out more about exports from Iceland keep following our analysis on seadatacenter.com. Please contact us at info@seadatacenter.com for more information.

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