Soaring cold water prawn prices
Seafood prices are only going one way these years; up – and since the late summer months, CWP prices have been soaring all over the world and they are expected to peak during the high-consumption period around Christmas. This situation is caused by a number of coinciding issues – quota cuts, weather conditions, illness in farmed warm water prawns – all resulting in a worldwide prawn shortage, pushing up prices.
By Ditte LundCold water prawn quotas have been cut substantially over the years resulting in less product on the market – both from Greenland and Canada. Furthermore, the Canadian fishery has experienced some hardships due to very cold weather and difficult ice-situation in the 2013/14 catching season. This combined with the lowered TAC meant that the Canadian fishermen chose to focus on other species, e.g. capelin, for a while, thus shortening the season and catching less prawns. Much of the prawns that were caught in the 2013/14 season, were sent to the North American market, which meant that there have been app. 10,000 T less Canadian prawns for the European market than expected.
Influence from other species
The price development of other prawn species also has some influence on the cold water prawn price. In the market, some substitution between cold water prawns and farmed warm water species takes place.
Historically, cold- and warm water prices have followed each other. However, Warm water prices have risen over the last few years, as the Asian warm water farms have been hit by the illness EMS (Early Mortality Syndrome), causing the prawns to die in their ponds, which lowered the volume produced substantially, triggering price increases. EMS meant that the demand for CWPs increased substantially, as retailers and wholesalers largely replaced the missing volume of WWP with CWP. Warm water producers seem to be starting to recover from the disease, making them able to put more volume on the market, again matching supply with demand. Read more about the differences between CWP and WWP here.
Future perspectives for cold water prawns
As opposed to the farmed warm water prawns, cold water prawns are wild caught, meaning that production cannot necessarily be increased to meet the market demand – at least not without jeopardizing the sustainability of the fishery and ultimately depleting the stock. So in the end, the market has to adapt to the smaller supply, for example by influencing end-users' perception of cold water prawns from an everyday commodity to a product for special occasions, partly through pricing but also by, as an industry, taking responsibility for making the best possible quality – read more about this here.
