Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) : economic performance of the EU Fish Processing Industry Sector (STECF-OWP-12-01)

The 2011 Economic Report on the European Union (EU) fish processing industry provides a comprehensive overview of the latest information available on the structure and economic performance. The report has been produced by fisheries economists from the JRC and a group of economic experts convened under the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF). The data used to compile all the various analyses contained within the report were collected under the frameworks of the Data Collection Regulation (DCR); cf. Council Regulation (European Commission (EC)) No 1543/2000 of 29 June 2000 and the data collection framework (DCF). The fish processing sector in the EU had more than 3,500 companies with fish processing as main activity that accounted for around 25.5 thousand million Euros of turnover and more than 6 thousand million Euros of Gross Added Value in 2009. The fish processing industry provided employment to around 150 thousand people in the whole Europe. The fish processing industry shows improvement in terms of higher turnover in 2009 compared to 2008, despite the global and sectorial situations. Even after the start of the financial crisis in 2008 many countries report an increase in turnover, net profit or employment. Also on a first look at 2010/11 many experts report a better situation than in 2008/9. Overall the sector is suffering from very low margins and they continue to decrease due to increases in the raw materials and energy costs that cannot be translated into price increases due to the high negotiation power of the retail sector. The fish processing companies in many countries seem to be more efficient than previous years in its ability to react to increasing costs. In several countries there are positive expectations given that total assets are now higher than debt. The STECF reviewed the report by written procedure in February 2012.