The fish farming company Russian Sea, which has fish producing plants in fjords close to Norway, increased its prices 80-100 percent to 550-600 rubles (€11-12) per kilo fresh salmon the day after the embargo was announced, Flash Nord reported.
Russian Sea denied having doubled the price, but have anyway been called in for questioning by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), ITAR-TASS reports. Russian authorities have said that they will control food prices both by retailers and suppliers on a daily basis in an effort to prevent rapid price growth.
Read also: No more sushi for the Russians
A photo put on Facebook from a user in Murmansk shows that a 300 grams piece of smoked salmon from Russian Sea today costs 419 rubles (€8.6) in the shops, which gives a price per kilo of €29. Most shops are already out of fresh salmon.
Russian Sea is owned by Gennady Timchenko and Maksim Vorobyov. The company’s shares climed almost 23 percent after the sanctions were announced, Forbes reports.
Fish Union: No salmon left by 2016
Shipments of smolt for Russian Sea’s fish farms on the Kola Peninsula have also been hit by Russia’s embargo on seafood from Norway. This can have very serious consequences for Russian production of salmon, Fish Union, an organization for fish farmers and fish processing companies writes in a press release: “We have informed the Russian Government about the necessity of taking an immediate decision on this matter. If a solution is not found, by 2016 Russian consumers will be left without any salmon,” Flash Nord writes.
According to Fish Union, the fish farms on the Kola Peninsula will only be able to produce some 10 percent of the total demand in 2014. Within 4-5 years production can rise to 70.000 – about one third of what the country used to import from abroad.
