Anchorage Daily News
Author: Laine Welch | Fish Factor
Published February 9
Seafood sales “are on fire” in America’s supermarkets and one king salmon from Southeast Alaska is worth the same as two barrels of oil.
That’s $116.16 for a troll-caught chinook salmon averaging 11 pounds at the docks vs. $115.48 for 2 barrels of oil at $57.74 per barrel on Feb. 3.
As more COVID-conscious customers opted in 2020 for seafood’s proven health benefits, salmon powered sales at fresh seafood counters. Frozen and “on the shelf” seafoods also set sales records, and online ordering tripled to top $1 billion.
Those are some takeaways from a National Fisheries Institute Global Marketing Conference hosted online by SeafoodSource News.
Here is a sampler of what experts called “eye-popping” 2020 retail sales reflecting America’s trend to eat more fish:
IRI, a world leader in market data, said overall sales at in-store fresh seafood counters jumped 28% to $871 million, led by salmon with a 19% increase to $2.2 billion.