MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean salmon production forecasted to drop 40% this year

With Chile's farmed salmon production expected to drop between 40 and 50% this year, Chilean producers can only hope that the price of the fish – as it has in recent months – continues to rise.

Last December, the price of salmon rose 22.7% compared to the same month in 2007, reaching 5.3 USD per kilogram. If that trend continues, the relatively high prices could help offset at least some of the industry's projected losses. This year's Chile's expected production drop results from an ongoing outbreak of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA), a highly contagious virus that first appeared in the country in mid 2007. Since then the disease has continued to spread throughout the country's southern salmon farming regions, forcing the closure of numerous salmon farms and processing plants. The closures in turn led to an estimated 7,500 layoffs. Thousands more job cuts are expected in the coming months. Because of the ISA situation, producers have been harvesting their salmon prematurely, processing them, in other words, before they have a chance to contract the illness. The premature harvests actually led to record exports in 2008, when the Chilean salmon industry sold more than 2.4 billion US dollars worth of fish, according to Instituto de Fomento Pequero (Fisheries Promotion Institute). The year-end figures came as quite a surprise considering the so-called "crisis" that has supposedly plunged the industry in recent months. The panorama of apparent problems even prompted intervention by the government, which in late November announced it will guarantee some 120 million USD in loans to struggling salmon companies. Analysts, though, say the industry is indeed due for a huge slide, with production expected to fall this year from approximately 375,000 tons to 220,000 tons. By Patagonia Times Staff