Editorial director Tom Seaman brings you a roundup of the main stories from the previous week     

Our top story last week was an intriguing piece of news on mergers and acquisitions as  Deloitte Corporate Finance starts to market a large Atlantic Canadian processor. 

In the opportunity dubbed "Project Fox," the Toronto, Ontario-based arm of Deloitte describes the company up for sale as one of the largest processors in the Atlantic Canada region, holding limited and scarce government-issued seafood processing licenses for multiple species.

Deloitte does not reveal the company's name. The three processors seen to most closely match the description -- Beothic Fish Processors, Quinlan Brothers and Royal Greenland's Quin-Sea Fisheries -- all issued denials to Undercurrent News that they are for sale. 

Then, Undercurrent was reporting live from the International Coldwater Prawn Forum (ICWPF) 2024, held on Nov. 14 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

The packed single-day event encompassed presentations ranging the full length of the value chain, from stock and fishing outlooks, sustainability issues, and AI in fisheries, to markets and marketing.

Global coldwater shrimp landings should level out at around 225,000 metric tons by 2030, Carsten Hvingel, formerly of Norway's Institute of Marine Research and now with DTU Aqua in Denmark, told the audience at ICWPF. 

That's down 7% from 2024's levels, which have been estimated at 265,898t. But it's a brighter forecast than Hvingel gave two years prior, also at the ICWPF when his estimate was for 210,000t.

Over in the US, it's déjà vu for seafood importers. Port strikes are again being threatened on the US east coast as negotiations have broken down between the US Maritime Alliance and the International Longshoremen's Association over automation concerns.

The situation threatens ports in at least a dozen customs districts that accounted for a combined 1.8 million metric tons of seafood worth $14.7 billion in 2023, based on data maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA). That's 59% of the overall 3.1m metric tons of seafood and 57% of the overall $25.8bn worth of seafood imported last year.  

American per capita seafood consumption moved in the wrong direction in 2022, but a group assigned the role of promoting seafood in the US believes major gains are about to be made.

NOAA just released its annual "Fisheries of the United States" report, describing the state of commercial and recreational fishing and aquaculture in the country as of 2022. Though the data is always a bit dated, the report serves as an important barometer for the US seafood industry.

Of course, the numbers that come at the end of the report but typically get the most attention are those related to seafood consumption. NOAA reports that Americans ate an average of 19.7 pounds of seafood per capita in 2022, 3.4% less than the 20.5 lbs average in 2021.

On pricing, the levels for frozen, headed and gutted Atlantic cod and haddock from Russia and Norway in week 45 of 2024 (Nov. 4-10) are up between 54% and 140% since week 52 of 2023 (Dec. 25-31).

That was the week after US president Joseph Biden's executive order 14114 expanded his ban on importing Russian seafood to include also products processed in third countries, like China.

For the rest of last week's top stories, follow the links below.

• Opinion: RAS farms need contracts, competence, commodity case to attract investors
• PE-backed UK retailer Morrisons parts ways with seafood veteran 
• UK's Subzero buys up Grimsby coated fish processor
• Week 46 farm-gate shrimp roundup: Vietnam prices keep rising with India stable, Indonesia dips
• Farmed cod on path to 70,000t but no replacement to wild catch shortfall