Trebles all round

It doesn’t need Sir David Attenborough to get the message across that the world’s oceans are in a terrible state, with rising temperatures killing off coral reefs, vast floating wastelands of plastic, and fishing methods far offshore that would raise a few eyebrows among the pirates of the Barbary Coast. With estimates suggesting that as little as 10% of the piscine protein that’s hoiked out of the water ever ends up on a plate, it’s clear that this is a sector that needs some proper international regulation.

This may go some way to answering the conundrum as to why an operator such as Premier, which keeps on dishing up admirably solid results, has a share price that is plummeting to the bottom like a shark that has just had its fin removed for soup purposes. Boosted by the acquisition of Talhado Fishing, the company has trebled its operating profit on the back of a strong performance in squid, which its European customers are tucking into with abandon and coming back for seconds.

So far so good for customers and shareholders, if perhaps not so much for our cephalopodic chums. Premier is investing to triple the size of its abalone farm, which sounds like an altogether more palatable concept than the current free-for-all of poaching and corruption involved in getting these delicacies onto the plate.

But the real worry is the department of agriculture, forestry & fisheries, which will be allocating fishing rights next year, and is by all accounts an organisation that makes Eskom look like a paragon of governance and delivery.

It’s clear that this is a sector that needs some proper international regulation