Exports of Scottish salmon fell sharply last year after being hit by the Covid pandemic, according to new figures.
Statistics published by HMRC showed they dropped by 23 per cent to 72,155 tonnes, compared to the 94,315 tonnes exported in 2019
Export sales of whole, fresh salmon were down by £168m, at £451m.
The Scottish Salmon Producers Association (SSPO) has blamed the pandemic and subsequent shutdown of food service outlets around the world, as well as and greatly restricted air transport for hitting distant markets the hardest.
READ MORE: Scottish salmon farm suffers 'major' seal attack as thousands of fish lost
Scottish salmon sales in China were down 76 per cent by value and down 42 per cent by value in the US.
However, as sales dropped in the more distant markets, Scotland’s salmon producers turned more to Europe.
Exports of Scottish salmon to the EU became more important in 2020, accounting for 69 per cent of all global sales in volume (50,000 tonnes) and 64 per cent in value (£288 million) terms, an increase from 56 per cent and 52 per cent in 2019 respectively.
Tavish Scott, Chief Executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation, said producers were confident exports would revive as markets opened up and that 2021 would be a good year for the sector.
But he warned today that the greater emphasis on Europe has now left producers even more vulnerable to the problems caused by Brexit.
Mr Scott said the pandemic, followed by the Brexit end-of-transition change, had been a hard for the sector. “This has been a double whammy,” he said.
Mr Scott said: “The last year has been a bruising time for the Scottish salmon sector, as these new figures show. Our producers have battled really hard to get salmon to their customers around the world, against really strong head winds.
READ MORE: Farmed salmon industry producing ‘environmental and social costs’
“It is to their credit that they have managed to get so much salmon to their global customers and the switch to EU trade was a good way of offsetting the difficulties experienced elsewhere.
“But now that the UK has left the EU and the full implications of Brexit are clear, our members are suffering from the burden of excessive bureaucracy and red tape which is making it difficult for them to compete in the European market.
“That is why we appealed to both the UK and Scottish governments to come together with experts from across our sector and supply chain, to find ways of streamlining the red tape and giving our members the certainty of getting fish to the EU markets on time.”
Brexit: 'utter disaster'
Celine Kimpflin, Head of Markets at Scottish Sea Farms, one of the biggest producers of Scottish salmon, said the first week of January, when Brexit’s new rules kicked in, had been an “utter disaster” for salmon exporters.
She said: “We knew it was going to be difficult but we didn’t expect it to be this difficult. I don’t think as a country we were that well prepared in terms of bureaucracy.”
Ms Kimpflin said health certificates which should take half an hour to complete sometimes took as long as 10 hours to process.
Scottish Sea Farms exports around 200 tonnes of salmon to the EU a week, but this has been reduced by as much as half at the moment.
Ms Kimpflin welcomed the creation of the government taskforce which met today (Fri) for the first time and is designed to help streamline the system.
But she said an even better solution would be to invite EU officials to Scotland and show them how the salmon sector operates.
“We need to have a dialogue, work out how we can make the export process more streamlined and give them confidence to import our product.
“At the end of the day though, we have good relationships with our customers built up over the years and it is not the company they have a problem with. That gives me real hope.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel