General trends in Russian canned seafood importation in 2004-2007

The Russian market has been always remarkable for its stable demand for canned fish. From the Soviet times Russia has been showing a traditional range of canned fish items steadily available in retail outlets. Such range includes canned herring, mackerel, horse mackerel, saury, sardine, pink salmon, sprat, etc, according to the study produced by http://www.fishnet-russia.com/ (https://www.fishnet.ru/).

In the recent years, as the exotic cuisine has been gaining popularity, the Russian importers have been purchasing larger volumes of non-traditional products such as flying fish roes or canned cuttlefish which have been earlier non familiar for consumers. A considerable rise of import of dried and dry-cured seafood snacks to beer from China in also a worth noticing development of the recent years.

In the period under analysis, that is from 2004 to 2007, the overall dynamics of the Russian import of canned seafood has shown little development. Probably, the volume of the Russian market of imported canned fish has reached its maximum level and after a sligtht rise of import in 2005, import volumes returned to its normal level in 2006 and in 2007 it slightly decreased.

However, not the volumes, but the import structure is of larger interest in terms of dynamics. In 2004-2007 there was a clear trend of decreasing import of traditional products versus rising purchases of delicatessen and exotic products.

Evidently, the trend can be attributed to improving welfare of the Russian consumers, rising interest to exotic cuisine as well as to developing domestic production of traditional canned fish items. More specifically, according to some sources, while in 2002 imported products won nearly one half of the market, in 2007 their market share hardly exceeded one fifth.

In other words, the import volumes remained practically at the same level due to the rise of new products which compensated for the drop of shipments of traditional products.

More specifically, in the period from 2004 to 2007 Russian importers boosted purchases of such canned products as anchovies (+128%), cod roes (+559%), squid (+1874%), crab (+1852%), shrimp (+553%), octopus (+1186%), cod liver (+47%), saury (+4030%), sardine (+53%), herring (+58%), mackerel (+234%), tuna (+68%) and oysters (+7994%).

In the meantimes, imports decreased for the following canned fish items: sprats (-23%), flounder/plaice (-54%), smelt (-85%), salmon (-86%), sprat paste (-89%), Baltic herring (-79%), sardinella (-26%) and horse mackerel (-53%).

From 2004 to 2007 the Russian import of canned finfish and other aquatic products showed mixed trends. More specifically, in 2005 the nation's import of canned fish grew by 14% from 43,960 metric tons in 2004 to 49,961 tonnes. In value the import rose by 39% from 42.9 million USD to 59.9 million USD. Despite decreased import volume in 2006 by 11% to 44,483 tonnes, the import value kept growing and reached 66.2 million USD. In 2007 the import volume continued decreasing, dropping by 8% to 40,973 tonnes, while the import value declined by 10% to 59.5 million USD.

Please send order for the study or enquiries to our sales manager Oksana Kozlova icq 402622314 at sales@fishnet-russia.com, tel./fax: +7 81153 38685, 39081.