report

Jason Smith, producer of the report, discusses what the latest top 100 list tells us about the prevailing trends in the seafood industry.

Find out who the leading players are in the seafood industry with this unique report listing the sector's largest firms.

This year’s 320-page edition of Undercurrent News' annual ranking gives an overview of the largest companies in the seafood industry, ranked by the size of their 2018 or latest available revenue figure, in US dollar equivalent.

Financially, the upward trend continues. When combined, the top 100 seafood companies in the world had sales of almost $107 billion in 2018, up 6% from the previous year. In our ranking last year, we reported the respective period’s combined revenue growth of 9%.

This year’s list features six companies that are newcomers to our ranking, a result in some cases of improved sales, M&A activity, or price movements.

Otherwise, a number of incumbents have seen some dramatic reshuffling within the top 100 list this year. In some cases, it is due to more detailed information coming to light - for example, we moved one Thai company significantly upwards, as the company began detailing its aquaculture revenues for the first time in 2019. In other cases, market conditions are to blame. Not surprisingly, a continuous fall in shrimp prices in 2018 led to a number of shrimp packers to slide down in this year’s list.

Conversely, favourable price conditions for their key species in 2018 propelled the rise of a number of Chilean companies in the 2019 list as they showed strong year-over-year sales growth.

The geographical makeup for the 2019 list is largely similar to previous years, with some important differences.

Japan still has the highest representation on the list, even though it has declined by one compared to 2018, to 22 spots on this ranking.

Broken down by activity, wild-catch companies still outnumber those active in aquaculture by a comfortable margin.

Get more details on all of these trends and much more in our report, which includes:

• A ranking of the world's 100 largest companies
• An introduction describing the trends that have affected the sector and shaped the industry
• Charts showing a breakdown by country, sector, ownership and farmed species
• Entries on each company, listing key details, followed by a description, a summary of the latest events and trends, and analysis