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Governor: We’ll squeeze Norwegian salmon out of Russia

Dmitry Dmitriyenko (BarentsObserver.com)

Our fish farming projects will soon squeeze Norwegian fish out of the Russian market, said Murmansk Governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko.

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According to the governor in Russia’s neighboring county to Norway, the grand-scaled plans for development of fish farming in Murmansk Oblast will make it possible for Russian fish to overtake Norway’s position on the Russian Market.

According to Dmitriyenko, the company Russian Salmon has invested 12-15 million rubles on fish farming plants in the Pechenga Bay, where they plan to produce 20-25 000 tons of salmon every year. So far in 2011 the company has produced 5000 tons.

Another project in the pipeline is the company Russian Sea’s plans for a large fish farm in five different bays on the Kola Peninsula. Production plans for these facilities are about 20 000 tons annually.

- If these projects go according to plan, trust me – soon there will be very little Norwegian fish on the Russian market, Governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko said to Interfax.

Read also: Russian salmon for Russian customers

Norway is the largest exporter of salmon to Russia, and in 2011 Russians will eat more Norwegian salmon than never before. Only in October, Norway exported 11 070 tons of salmon to Russia, according to Seafood.no. Russia is Norway’s second largest importer of salmon, only surpassed by France.

In course of the last few weeks, a controversy has developed between Norway and Russia in the fish sphere. Russia’s Fishery Agency threatened to strike Norwegian fish export as revenge to the Norwegian coast guard’s way of treating Russian trawlers in the waters around Svalbard. The threat was soon followed by the announcement that several Norwegian salmon producers were banned from the Russian market.

Leaders of Russian fishery unions at a seminar in Oslo earlier this week rebuffed speculations about an alleged link between the detention of Russian trawlers in the Spitsbergen waters and the expulsion from the Russian market of Norwegian fish exporters.