report

The still nascent global seafood sector is highly fragmented across continents and markets, but some companies have emerged as leaders, in one field or across several activities.

It is these companies that Undercurrent News aims to provide an overview of with our latest World's 100 Largest Seafood Companies 2014 report, by detailing who they are, what they do, while ranking them by the size of their 2013 or latest available turnover figure.

Combined, the 100 companies on our ranking this year had revenues of nearly $100 billion, up by $1.8bn from our 2013 report.

Salmon prices were a major driving force behind this increase -- the combined revenues of salmon producers on our report this year are up $2.2bn from our 2012 report, with two new salmon players making it to the ranking. High shrimp prices also benefited some -- Zhanjiang Guolian Aquatic Products' revenue jumped 53%, and Minh Phu Seafood was up 23 places thanks to a 41% revenue increase.

Similarly to last year, the ten largest companies - with revenues of more than $2bn each -- accounted for over a third ($35bn) of the total revenues and the 25 largest for over half ($57bn).

As in our 2013 report, Japanese companies comfortable dominate with 26 of the companies listed. The US is next largest (11) and Norway third (9), again fairly stable from last year.

However, there are also several changes from the previous report. Looking at the companies’ movements up and down the ranking from the 2013 report illustrates some of the key events and trends that shaped the seafood industry in the past 12 months.

Take for instance the spectacular drop of Pescanova, which, after a year in bankruptcy, has fallen from eighth largest in our 2013 report to 18th largest, and is likely to drop  further as creditors and administrators sell off its assets.

Dutch shrimp processor Heiploeg, which was the 100th company in our ranking last year, also fell into bankruptcy, and is now largely incorporated into Parlevliet and van der Plas.

A third company from last year’s ranking went into receivership: Yihe, a US-based salmon processor. The group no longer features on our report as its revenues are thought to now be below the $300m mark.

Other players, in turn, have been incorporated into bigger ones through acquisitions: Morpol is now part of Marine Harvest; American Pride Seafood is now part of High Liner Foods; Copeinca has been engulfed by Pacific Andes; Norway Pelagic by Austevoll Seafood.

Both Maruha Nichiro and Marubeni have acquired smaller players, while Russian Sea Catching has been growing fast, gobbling up Russian pollock catchers, although not yet big enough to feature in this year's ranking.