Global price situation on cold water prawns
Since the late summer months, CWP prices have been going only one way; up. The situation is caused by a number of coinciding issues - quota cuts, weather conditions, illness in farmed warm water prawns – all resulting in a worldwide prawn shortage, pushing up prices.
There is less available product on the market due to quota cuts as well as weather conditions in Canada in the fishing season with very low temperatures and a lot of ice.
Influence from other species
Over the last few years, the price on warm water prawns has risen, as the Asian warm water farmers have been hit by the illness EMS (Early Mortality Syndrome). This has lowered the available volume of WWP and triggering price increases, which again has led a lot of retailers to replace the missing WWP volumes with CWP.
Future perspectives
As opposed to the farmed warm water prawns, cold water prawns are wild caught, meaning that production cannot necessarily be increased to meet the market demand – at least not without jeopardizing the sustainability of the fishery and ultimately depleting the stock. So in the end, the market has to adapt to the smaller supply and prices are expected to remain high.
