March 5, 2014

In a bid to tap into the €1.6 billion (US$2.2 billion) that Catalan households spend on fish-based products every year, the executive of Catalonia, one of Spain's wealthiest regions, is set to create a trademark specific to the local seafood farming industry.

Undercurrent News has had access to the report advising the move, written by the institute of food innovation Irta and the aquaculture business cluster AquiCat, and which points at Greece and Turkey as competitors to challenge – the size of Catalonia's economy is comparable to that of Ireland or Portugal by gross domestic product (GDP).

The demand for government support to boost farmed-seafood production seems to come for the Catalan distribution industry. "Aquaculture brings stable supply and prices so promotions, for instance, are easier to plan," says one supermarket chain owner in the study.

Spain's main aquaculture product consists of seabass and seabream, for which it competes with cheaper imports from Greece and Turkey.

"Greece inundated the market with cheap products and crashed aquaculture in many European countries like ours, but now they are in bad shape and we must take advantage, not via further price cuts but better quality," adds a grocer.

While Catalans' fish consumption reached 190 million tonnes in 2011, their fishing companies have seen captures decline by more than 13 million tonnes since 2001 to 31.8 million tonnes during that decade.

"With aquaculture products purchasing becoming more popular and the scarcity of wild fish, it is obvious that the Catalan fish farming sector has a strong potential," says the paper revised by environment and aquaculture expert Cristobal Aguilera.

In 2011, Catalonia harvested some 6,800 tonnes of which 55.3% were fish and the rest were shellfish, a scenario described by entrepreneurs and seafood distributors as the "non-existent Catalan production".

The Mediterranean coast of Catalonia of about 550 kilometres shows features, from small coastal plains to the Ebro River's delta stretching out into the sea, that analysts noted offer opportunities for marine aquaculture. But water temperatures ranging between 11°C to 26°C, the majority of the suitable sites cannot be used because of competition with tourism. In this context, offshore fish farming has to be the alternative, the report states.

Most participants told researchers they would prefer more information on how to place sales in the market, and commercialisation strategies, than government intervention or injection of taxpayer's money.