As part of IFFO’s, The Marine Ingredients Organisation, efforts to engage members virtually during the Covid-19 pandemic, the group held a Members Meeting Webinar to give the latest news from across the global industry.

IFFO’s Director General, Petter Johannessen, noted that “communication throughout the value chain is key and as an industry, we must ensure that during this challenging period we share solutions in order to maintain resilient supply chains, and keep championing best practices in terms of sustainability. With IFFO members representing more than 55% of the total world production and between 75% and 80% of the total annual trade worldwide, IFFO is the only organisation of the fishing sector invited to the OECD-FAO working group on agri-commodities.”

IFFO’s China Director Maggie Xu presented the latest market and regulatory insights from China. Xu noted that both the fishmeal and fish oil markets have been negatively impacted by restrictions due to Covid-19 and unpredictable weather conditions. Overall aquafeed output in China is expected to remain steady or slightly muted due to these conditions. Increased consumption of marine ingredients should come from the pig sector, which continues to recover after the African Swine Fever outbreaks decimated the Chinese hog stock in 2019. In terms of domestic supply of marine ingredients, China’s output from whole fish has decreased in recent years whereas supply from by-products has remained stable.

Giving a global perspective, IFFO’s Market Research Director, Enrico Bachis, gave an update on both demand and supply of marine ingredients, based on IFFO’s extensive network of companies providing a constant and reliable flow of data on production, trade and prices. In 2019 both fishmeal and oil output experienced a decrease with respect to 2018, on the back of poorer catches especially in Peru, Iceland and Denmark. As usual, landings in Peru will play a major role in determining the global trend, and for this year the expectation is of something slightly above the 2019 output. Global marine ingredients supply should be just short of 5 million mt of fishmeal and around 1 million mt of fish oil. With the assumption of a fish oil yield of 3.5% of the anchovy catches in Peru, the overall supply of fish oil this year could at best match that of 2019, although a small decrease is more likely given the poor results in Europe. IFFO’s weekly and monthly reports will continue to deliver first-hand information to its members, along with a new trade report, with a regional focus, issued on a weekly basis as of June 1.