report

Adding value, stimulating sales, creating buyer loyalty, aiming for premium prices? Are you thinking of labelling? Here is a guide for you.

Labelling seafood? What a challenge for private entrepreneurs, when so many options are available! Organic, ASC, MSC, Friend Of the Sea, Protected Origin, Label Rouge, collective brand? Many labels are available to seafood producers and traders to help them attract professional buyers and end consumers. Which one to choose? Which consumers to target, with what message? Going solo or as a group? What benefits to expect and at what costs? In today’s highly competitive context, labelling seafood products has become a necessity in order to capture buyers’ attention, to reassure the main players along the distribution chain and sometimes to improve the selling price.

Finding one’s way in the maze of labels

This 85-page-long report addresses these questions, within a European perspective. Beyond preconceptions and common beliefs, this report will help in a practical way all those seeking to better understand whether and how labels can benefit them. In absolute terms, and from an economic viewpoint, there is not one approach to labelling that is better than the others; there is just one that is better suited to the specificities of your situation. The goal is to guide operators in the jungle of labels and to help them ask the right questions.

A guide unique in Europe

You may think ‘here is yet another list of seafood labels’.  This is not. This guide is unique as it takes the point of view of the enterprise seeking to label its products. It does not review the performance of labels with regard to their objectives and standards.  It does not check whether MSC is really good for the planet or whether the Label Rouge really tastes better. It helps the enterprise select the scheme that will best reflect its values and match its needs and the needs of its targeted clients. This guide is aimed at seafood operators whether fish farmers, fishing companies, seafood processors, traders and processors. It is designed to help GM, quality and R&D directors and marketing directors understand the why and the how in labelling seafood. It makes them save time and money in their decision on this crucial matter.

The authors

The guide is written and edited by two seafood industry specialists, Pascale Baelde, fisheries scientist and Marie Christine Monfort, economist and author of several market research. It is based on their long standing experience as consultants in the seafood industry and their experience in advising private businesses in these issues.

Criteria analyzed for the main labels

• Differentiating attribute
• Eligibility
• Procedures
  • Criteria
  • Control
  • Communication
• Timeframe to obtain the label
• Costs
• Difficulties/ contraints
• Benefits / advantages
• Pertinence
  • Level of recognition on the European market
  • Examples
  • Competing programs
• Further information

Summary of the appellations/labels applied to aquatic products:

Table of contents: