Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
With a view to tap the growing potential of the seafood market in India, Norway is aggressively looking at increasing its seafood exports to the country. The focus would be on increasing the exports of some of its popular fishes like the Norwegian Salmon, Saith, Haddock, Mackerel, Scallops, Halibut, Cod, Herring to name a few. Norway has been exporting seafood to India for the past 10 years but in limited volume and the seafood is often exported to India via Germany, Poland and Denmark. Speaking to Food & Hospitality World, on the sidelines of the Norway Seafood Dinner held at The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, Christian Chramer, director of communications, Norwegian Seafood Council, stated, “Presently, the export volumes to India are limited since market access is an issue here. For instance, a high tax of around 34 per cent is levied on seafood exports which makes India a challenging market to enter. We hope that a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) can be established between the two countries.” Presently, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein are in talks with the Indian government to establish a FTA. To penetrate into the India market, the Norwegian Seafood Council, the umbrella organisation that promotes and markets this industry the world over, will be facilitating contact between Norwegian exporters and Indian seafood importers, food service and retail sectors.
“We are setting up discussions to enable Norwegian seafood companies to meet and establish contact with Indian importers, food service and retail sectors. The main issues we are addressing are logistics, target market, pricing and deliveries. We would also be working with hospitality students to educate them about our seafood and train them in recipe development,” mentioned Chramer. Norway’s total seafood exports topped US$ 10 billion this year, an increase of US$ one billion from the previous year. “We are expecting to have a strong year ahead. Our ability to deliver to the market is lower than the global demand so the prices are increasing slightly. However we know that we can develop more markets as our productions will increase in the years to come. We are going to have a higher value price for our sustainable seafood like Cod, Mackerel and Herring,” he added. For Norway, European Union and Asia are the major export markets.