grinder
2009-10-08 15:30:23
I am wondering why no one has brought up the fact that North Pacific Seafoods and SPC are working together to keep the coho and king salmon prices low all summer. I have heard rumors that North Pacific has been just a buying station for SPC and just taking 25 cent per pound to buy them. Of course SPC has no reason to raise prices all summer. That way when the Retro checks come out in the spring The Coop bosses will look like hero's mean while the poor trollers are going under because our dock prices were so low we have no operating capital. With low dock prices and poor coho fishing this season is a disaster with no help from the processors even the ones that we supposedly own.
yak2you2
2009-10-09 18:36:38
I don't think it's fair to blame any one particular seafood producer for the poor salmon prices. They all go with paying as little as they can get away with,,,why? Because it's the nature of business. You can't blame someone for taking a good deal. If anyone is at fault, I blame ourselves,as fishermen, for not organizing ourselves into a unified front that sticks up for our common causes. A co-op is good in theory, but if tons of similar product is available from somewhere else cheaper, the co-op will fail if it doesn't match the price. How can your co-op pay you twice what the Oregon boys are getting? or the guys in Yakutat? etc.
We ALL have to be on the same page, with the same asking price in mind, for ALL of the wild troll caught salmon produced from the west coast,,,if were ever going to really have a chance of getting paid a fair price.The story handed out this year was that the Europeans, who buy a lot of our cohos were experiencing financial difficulties do to the recession, and couldn't afford to pay very much for our salmon.Apparantly we aren't experiencing the recession over here! This caused the producers to vie to be the guy selling the cheapest product. WE have to ask ourselves is that what we really want to do? Be haggled down like this??? We need to set a uniform price, that we all agree to, then let them decide if they want to pay it, or eat trout.
The guys in the beef, pork, and chicken industries don't let economic woes dictate what their prices fall to,,,because they stick together.
Another oddity is,,,I don't know about European fish markets, but the claim that King salmon prices had to fall for lack of people willing to pay high prices for it, is hard to understand when you see it laying in the markets in Seattle, selling for the same prices it was last year. The only thing that's really gone down, is the ex-vessel price. Again, it's the nature of business, by low, sell high. You can't blame anyone for running a business to try to make all the money it can, the trick is to help our little businesses make all the money THEY can, by having our own little price fixing meetings, and then striking if we have to, to hold the line.
salmontroll
2009-10-09 19:01:44
Albertons in Lynnwood, Seattle Area salmon $8.00/lb , catfood $2.40/lb
yak2you2
2009-10-09 20:34:07
King salmon fillets @ Fred Meyers in Burien, 19.95 per lb., for previously frozen kings, maybe a dollar or two less than last year, but close. Last year I was paid 6.25 per lb. for summer kings, this year, 2.75 per lb. There was hardly any kings caught anywhere all up and down the coast this season,,,,there's just no excuse for that!
If you talk to a processor about having a preset ex-vessel price coast wide, they usually crinkle up their brow and say something like, "careful, you don't want to scare off all our customers with a price set to high." I don't think it would change at the consumer level all that much. The middlemen will still jockey to sell their product cheaper than the next guy, they'll just receive a smaller portion of the pie,,,,without being able to ring all the blood out of those of us at the bottom of the totem pole,as it should be.
Besides, why shouldn't seafood prices rise? everything else has!
The major hurdle would be implementing restrictions on ourselves, and sticking to them. It has never before in the history of fishing been an accomplishable feat. Someone once said that trying to heard fishermen was like trying to heard cats, and I can't hardly argue with that. So, could it really be done??? I keep thinking about a long time troller friend of mine who said of this summer's prices, " I was getting paid more per lb. when I started in 1974". The value of the dollar being what it is today, it's a wonder there's any trollers left on the water at all, and there simply won't be for much longer. Were in uncharted waters here, no fishermen in history have ever been ever been able to get together to set the price for an entire species of fish, but then again desperate times have always called for drastic measures.
yak2you2
2009-10-10 15:57:54
Before one gets to angry with his local fish buyer, consider how many of them go out of business regularly. I don't think the profit margin is quite what you'd assume.
It would be very interesting to track a salmon, if everyone at every step would have open books with you, and see just how it goes from beginning as a $2.75 fish to $30.00 per lb. fish being served in a restaurant somewhere. I'd be very curious to see where the biggest majority of the money would gravitate to.
I would be willing to bet after all the costs of doing business came off of the top, i.e.- production expenses, backbone loss, shipping, etc., you would have a pie graph that had fisherman, fishbuyers, and restaurants, all divvying their shares from one half of the pie. I don't know anything about it really, but if it's at all like any other business in this country, you'll find some fat guy in the middle somewhere who wears a tie to work every day, who never got any closer to a salmon than a phone call, and collects the other half of the pie for himself.
hopeless chuck
2009-10-10 22:36:44
Having been a cash buyer in both Wa. and Alaska during and after my trolling years I fill I can give a little info. Do fish companies fix prices? Yes they do communicate with each other and try to control prices (which I believe is illegal but can not be enforced). Is their profit margin narrow? Yes it is. There was many a time I sat watching other tenders buy every fish just because the owner of the fish company I worked for would and could not go up a nickel because his profit margin was so small. But we were a small fish company compared to others, the big fish companies can hold their product and release it when the prices are more profitable where the company I worked for had to sell their fish to have cash flow. I would say marketing your own product or working in a co-op is probably the way to go or deal with those companies that you feel have given you a fair shake. I would also suggest to occasionally sell to cash buyers because it does help keep the big companies under the gun to give a fair price for your fish, if you lose the cash buyers you will see the bottom fall out on fish prices. Hopeless Chuck.
ashadu
2009-10-25 20:02:42
skined boneless chum fillets-$7.75 lb, skinned boneless coho fillets,$12.95-Both frozen from trader joes. then a break to$7.75 for coho, from b.c.!!! its the system of marketing where everyone doubles the price to make "margin". I have never seen the supermarket pass on savings to the consumer and dont expect to ever see it happen. Its no wonder that so many freezer trollers are marketing thier own product although many are very high priced also. since the doller weakened steadily from march onward, it will be interesting to see if the europeans upped demand during the summer. as for the fish buyers, thier job is to make thier customers happy and get rid of all the fish they buy, after all "anyone who wants to be a fisherman probably deserves what they get". next year will be better, have faith! ashadu
Salty
2009-10-26 16:57:35
What is interesting is that the chum fillets are more than half the value of the coho fillets while coho bring well over double and nearly three times the ex vessel value for trollers. But then there might be significantly more high grading to get the chum fillets. In other words a smaller percentage of the chums are suitable for filleting.
Ocean Gold
2009-10-27 20:03:29
Slippery here , be careful what you wish for, look at Bristol Bay since the lawsuit they have never gained there price back. This has always been a question as long as there was two buyers and low prices, the interesting thought is, why has the middle guy never been questioned? He is the one that sells the fish to the store or the store marking up the fish so high?
We have to remeber one thing it is not so easy to go to the other guy to sell our fish no matter how high or low our price might be. We shoot our self in the foot most of the time by telling the other company what that company is paying or "why are they paying more". Be happy we can sell fish at our convenance not theres our we will be boxing and shipping our own fish to market.