Undercurrent News
Louis Harkell
Octopus prices have recently fallen, as the record level reached in the first half of the year months started denting demand, industry sources told Undercurrent News.
Due to the high prices, some buyers reduced or even halted orders in recent months, as restaurants switch to cheaper products or shrink portions, sources said. This is now affecting prices, they said.
“Prices are falling but it is expected that in the next harvest they will fall more,” Manuel Rodriguez, commercial director at Spanish processor Fesba, told Undercurrent.
“Prices are almost €2 [$2.31] per kilogram lower,” a source in Morocco added, adding that for example Moroccan T6 octopus was now priced around €10.60/kg (plus commission), down from approximately €12.60/kg (plus commission) last April. Dealers are also selling their inventories more quickly, he noted. In the past some sellers held on to inventories speculating that prices would keep rising.
Sources indicated that octopus prices in Mexico, where fishing is still ongoing, have dropped by around €1/kg.
“We reached a ceiling,” a Morocco-based source told Undercurrent during the seafood show Conxemar last week.
Octopus sales have been “growing a lot”, Sergio Reis, the chief operating officer at Portuguese trader and processor Brasmar, told Undercurrent. The firm invested €22 million in two new processing facilities for octopus and cod last year. This year the company recently won a national food award in Portugal for its octopus products.
“Until the middle of the year, even with the very high prices of octopus, we felt we had strong demand. Now in the last two, three months, we feel it’s not bad, but it’s not growing anymore. And the main reason is pricing,” Reis pointed out.
Prices have recently been “impossible to work with”, said the Morocco-based source, blaming low landings and high demand, with the former pinned on poor resource management.
Previously, Morocco would export two to three times the fishing quota, he said; now, it exports “exactly the same”.
Record high octopus prices have fueled consolidation among Spanish fishing companies, meanwhile.
The next octopus fishing season in Morocco is expected to start around mid-December. Higher catches, due to a healthier biomass in the water, could cause a further drop in prices, said the Morocco source. But due to transport times, fresh octopus might not arrive in Italy and Spain until next year if not in small volumes and those countries will have to rely on existing stocks for Christmas and New Year.
Spanish octopus processor Frigorificos de Camarinas said octopus sales have been growing “every year”, although this year’s high prices have deterred some buyers in its biggest markets Portugal and Spain, Adriana Canosa, sales director at the firm, told Undercurrent.
Her firm is building a new €5m processing plant in Agadir, Morocco, to increase production of cooked octopus and be closer to the resource. The new plant will produce up to 100 metric tons of cooked octopus and octopus flowers a day, Canosa said.
She shared the view prices would drop in the new year.
“I think in 2017 it was very high, but it was not this level,” she said.
Contact the authors matilde.mereghetti@undercurrentnews.com, louis.harkell@undercurrentnews.com
