The structure of Norwegian seafood trade

Abstract

While seafood is a highly traded commodity, lack of data has largely prevented examination of the firms and industries that are conducting the actual transactions. In this paper we use highly disaggregated data to provide an overview of the seafood exports from Norway, the world’s 2nd largest seafood exporting country, and a country where fisheries as well as aquaculture are important industries. The industry has a global reach with Norwegian seafood reaching 172 different countries in the period 2016–2020. While there are as many as 437 different exporting firms, this is relatively few firms compared to the 11,024 different buyers that import Norwegian seafood. There is significant heterogeneity in the export sector from very small firms handling only a few products to very large firms handling a large variety of products. The average firm is quite specialized and serves only 9 markets. However, there are also a handful of large exporters who ship products from all three main sectors in the Norwegian seafood industry to a large number of markets. The 10% largest companies make up 39% of the total export value and provide significant synergies between the aquaculture, pelagic and whitefish sectors.