Russian Seafood Producers to Open New Factories in Exchange for More Quotas

Eight Russian seafood companies will build new production facilities in exchange for quotas for Atlantic cod, haddock, and other fish species, assigned to them by Russia’s federal fishery agency, Rosrybolovstvo, Dp.ru reports.

The total investment in the new facilities will exceed 5.4 billion rubles ($81.5 million), according to the agency.

Rybotorgovaya Setj (Fish Trade Net), Barents Group, Polar Sea+, Russian Cod, Arkhangelsk Experimental Algal Plant and the Murman Sea Food companies are planning to build plants for processing cod, haddock and other fish species with a large production capacity of around 50 metric tons of finished products per day.

MurmanStroy and Park will invest in the construction of two medium and small capacity processing plants.

Seven of the eight onshore facilities are expected to be put into operation in 2019 and 2020, and one plant in 2021.

“The aim of the construction the new fish processing plants on investment quotas is a sharp increase in a share of the value-added fish products (VAP) in the country’s seafood market,” Rosrybolovstvo said.

In 2017, Russia produced more than 50,000 metric tons of fish fillets for the first time in several years, of which more than a third went to the domestic market, according to the agency’s data. The government has also been using incentives to encourage companies to renew their fleet.

After the construction of the new processing plants, the country’s fishery authorities are expecting between 60-80 percent of the total catch in the Northern Fisheries Basin will be processed at the domestic plants.

In June, Rosrybolovstvo signed nine agreements to allocate additional quotas in return for the construction of nine processing plants in the Far East with the total investment, amounting to around RUB 15 billion (€195.2 million/$226.3 million).