Lobster prices expected to fluctuate
Summer market looks promising, but COVID challenges still at play
The market for Atlantic Canadian lobster appears to be on the rebound.
Last year, restaurant shutdowns and other effects of the pandemic pushed the average price paid to harvesters down to about $4.50 to $5 per pound. And in Newfoundland and Labrador, prices hit a low of $3.71.
No one is certain how the 2021 season will play out, but the prices for the first catches may be anywhere from $8 to $9 per pound.
Earlier, the Fish Price Setting Panel, the board that decides fish prices in Newfoundland and Labrador, had set a price of $9.96 for lobster for the week of April 18-24.
In a report outlining its decision, the panel said there is a positive outlook for 2021.
Prices fluctuate through the season, though, and there’s no certainty that price will hold.
Geoff Irvine, executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada, told Saltwire the lobster market is complex and COVID is still causing some challenges.
The lobster fishery is significant for the Atlantic Canadian economy, especially for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
About 1,000 boats chase after the lobster for the twomonth spring fishery, said Ian Macpherson, executive director of the Prince Edward Island Fishermen’s Association. Another 250 fish lobster in the fall, he told Saltwire.
Last year they landed about 30 million pounds of lobster.
That fed about a dozen processing plants on the island, provided jobs for 2,000 people.
The lobster also created work in New Brunswick, since about a third of the catch went to processing plants there last year.
Jerry Gavin, executive director of the P.E.I. Seafood Processors Association, told Saltwire some of the challenges around COVID last season—retooling plants with protective barriers, sourcing personal protective equipment for workers and challenges around labour when temporary foreign workers were unable to get to P.E.I.— meant some of the processors could not handle all the lobster.
So some of the catch went to other provinces.
Gavin said this year everything is in order for a smoother start.
“Most temporary foreign workers are in place, employees are getting vaccinated and the markets are looking pretty good,” he said.
In P.E.I., he added, about 65 per cent of the summer lobster catch is processed as a value-added frozen-in-shell product.
Fourteen per cent is processed as meat and tails, he said, and only 12 per cent is shipped out as ‘live’ lobster
Those numbers are true for most of the lobster exported from Across Atlantic Canada, added Irvine.
“The bulk of it — 55 to 60 per cent — goes into valueadded processing,” he said.
Besides, he said, in this time of COVID there are “huge issues” around shipping live lobsters.
With a decrease in the number of routine cargo flights, processors have had to hire charters to get live product to their markets, and charter flights are more expensive.
“There are significant shipping and logistics issues overall,” he added.
“Ocean freight rates have
gone through the roof and new COVID regulations for imports into China — one of the major markets for Atlantic lobsters — have created uncertainties.”
Labour also continues to be a challenge, since many processors depend on temporary foreign workers from Mexico and elsewhere. In addition to the extra cost of paying for charter flights, there’s also the cost of the two-week quarantine period for each worker.
It adds to the challenge, said Irvine.
Still, he said, the beginning
of the 2021 season dramatically than last year.
“Lobster is the biggest fishery in Canada,” added Ivrine, and in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec it employs about 25,000 people on the processing and sales side.
In Nova Scotia, about 2,700 fish harvesters hold lobster licences, he said.
In all five provinces in the region there are about 9,500 lobster licences.
Throughout the Atlantic region the summer season ramps up in May and runs until early July, creating a two-month window of opportunity for harvesters and processors, and an export value that will reach over $1 billion for the Atlantic Canadian economy this year.