Volcano brings bonus for Southern Hemisphere salmon farmers – Fishupdate.com

Volcano brings bonus for Southern Hemisphere salmon farmers Published:  21 April, 2010

THE Iceland volcanic ash crisis has brought an unexpected bonus for a group of salmon farmers – on the other side of the world in New Zealand!

At least one farm on the South Island has received a surge in orders because much salmon  has been unable to get out of either Scotland or Norway due to the closure of air space in the northern hemisphere.

New Zealand King Salmon chief executive Grant Rosewarne said the company’s export orders had soared as customers in Asia  and the Middle East were unable to fly in seafood from Europe, with the extra orders worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company received an order from Dubai that was many times larger than its normal shipment.

Mr Rosewarne said: “We normally sell up to five cartons to Dubai and we have an order for 500, which is huge.” Double normal size orders have also been coming in from Singapore, Bangkok and Japan.

New Zealand salmon farmers are now increasing harvesting to meet further expected demand, especially from the United States which normally takes supplies from Norway and Scotland.Even in normal times, New Zealand is a major exporter of seafood with some even going to the UK. Last year it sold fish worth 1.4 billion New Zealand dollars, although only a small proportion of that amount (15 million dollars worth) is flown by plane.

Closer to home, after a series of false starts in the past 24 hours, air freighted fish from Iceland and Norway should start flying into Humberside and other UK airports in the next 48 hours  following last night’s decision to resume normal flying operations over Britain.