Norwegian salmon drops below NOK 80 per kilo

The summer slump in Norwegian fresh salmon prices shows no sign of letting up, according to the latest official figures.

The monitoring organisation Statistics Norway says they fell below the NOK 80 (£5.95) mark last week (week 26) for the first time this year down to NOK 79.9per kilo. This represents a drop of NOK 6.29 per kilo or 7.3% on week 25.

It is too early to tell when they will reach rock bottom but there are some reports that prices have started to recover in the past few days.

The drop in prices has been quite marked. In May fresh Norwegian salmon was making NOK 116.66 per kilo (£8.66). A month later it had fallen to NOK 85.85 per kilo (£6.37) and, as the Statistics Norway figures show, was below NOK 80 last week.

Although export volumes last week dropped by 748 tonnes they were still at the second highest level of the year so far at 17,377 tonnes so demand remains good.

The Norwegian Seafood Council reported yesterday that seafood exports for the first six months of 2024 were down for the first time in a number of years, mainly due to a salmon price slump last month.

Salmon remains far and away the king fish for overseas seafood buyers, however. The country’s salmon farmers earned NOK 56.3bn (£4.2bn) in exports sales during the first six months of this year.

The next highest earner was cod at NOK 6.8 billion (504.8m) – and some of that will be from farmed cod.

Once again Poland, Denmark (two major processing countries) and the United States were the largest markets for salmon.