Perish or prosper: Trade patterns for highly perishable seafood products

Abstract

In recent years trade with highly perishable agricultural products like fresh fish, berries, and cut flowers has increased substantially. The perishability of these products appears to challenge conventional wisdom when it comes to food trade, which emphasizes the importance of large shipments to reduce transportation costs. In this paper, gravity models and several margins of trade are estimated for the trade with fresh salmon, a highly perishable product. The results indicate that increased geographical distance have a larger negative effect than what is generally reported in the literature. Most interestingly, the number of exporters and the shipment frequency increase while there is little impact on shipment size when trade increase.Hence, freshness and possibly avoidance of losses by not selling products by the expiration date seem to be emphasized rather than economies of scale in transportation.

The Covid-19 impacts on the European Union aquaculture sector

“…The marine segments are known to consist of larger enterprises producing mainly salmon, seabass and seabream [44] . The enterprises harvest relatively high volumes of fish that mostly are aimed for supermarket chains on fixed contracts, and have larger capacity to serve different supply chains [8] . Therefore, this segment seems less affected by the crises.…”

Pricing heterogeneity and transaction mode: Evidence from the French fish market

“…However, it limits the degree of coordination that can be obtained between buyers and sellers and prevents relation specific investments (Kvaløy and Tveteras, 2008), suggesting that for some supply chains other transaction mechanisms may be more efficient. Asche et al (2021) indicate that this may be the case for fresh seafood due to its high degree of perishability.…”

Salmon trade duration: The application of firm‐level trade transaction data from the Norwegian salmon industry

“…However, there are some observations that assert that a different pattern can be found for the salmon trade. For instance, in their study, Asche et al (2021) conclude that the gravity model of the salmon trade showed different pattern in comparison to storable food commodities. They argue that the distance doesn't have the same magnitude of effect and that economies of scale in transport is not utilized for salmon.…”