Fish processing 2007

In 2007, some 74 million kilos of fish were used as raw material for fish processing, 53 million kilos of which were domestic fish and 21 million kilos imported.

Nearly half of the raw material used by processing industry consisted of ungutted Baltic herring and sprat exported deep-frozen. Altogether 18 million kilos of domestic fish and 13 million kilos of imports were used for the production of fresh fillet and other mechanically treated products. A total of 19 million kilos of fish, over half of which domestic, were used for producing highly processed products.

The amounts of species most widely used for processing, i.e. Baltic herring, rainbow trout, salmon and herring consisted over 90% of the fish raw material.

In 2007 there were 200 firms engaged in fish processing. There were 17 companies that processed more than one million kilos annually, and this group accounted for over 80 per cent of all fish processed. The number of fish-processing firms was almost the same as 2005, but the amount of processed fish had increased.