Global mackerel catch and import/export statistics

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Why do we import Norwegian mackerel even though our country has no shortage of mackerel caught and is actually exporting it?

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Most of the countries to which mackerel caught in the waters near our country is exported are African countries. Among the 27 countries to which our country exported more than 50 tons of mackerel in 2022, 14 were African countries, but the amount imported by these countries accounted for 74.3% of our country’s total exports.

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The main reason why African countries import such large quantities of mackerel is that they are economically poor, which leads to a lack of fishing boats, fishing technology, and processing facilities.

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Additionally, during that time, mackerel was imported from Europe, which was under colonial rule, to supply the protein that was lacking for the people, but as European countries began to limit the mackerel catch and set catch limits for fishing boats to protect fishery resources, the direction of catching large mackerel that could be sold at a high price rather than small mackerel that was cheap also played a role.

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However, this does not mean that our country indiscriminately catches small mackerel. Most of the mackerel caught in coastal waters are less than 30cm and 500g on average, and the fact that they are too small to be distributed domestically is the biggest reason why we export a large amount of mackerel to Africa.

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Some say that African countries import mackerel from Korea and Japan because they like mackerel with small roe, but that is just nonsense.

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It is not that they import small mackerel because they like it, but rather that they cannot import expensive European mackerel because they are financially poor.

In particular, the mass production of such false information through blogs that reproduce materials distributed by government agencies for promotional purposes must be avoided in the future.

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Meanwhile, our country imports refrigerated mackerel and frozen mackerel separately, but as can be seen in the picture below, the import volume of refrigerated mackerel is not large, so we will focus on frozen mackerel here.

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Before that, looking at FAO statistics, the global mackerel catch in 2020 was 3.521 million tons, with China and Japan taking 1st and 2nd place with 11.1% and 10.7% shares, respectively, while Korea caught 77,650 tons, taking 2.21% of the market share.

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As previously discussed, in 2022, Norwegian mackerel accounted for 87.6% of all frozen mackerel imports, while Ghana and Nigeria accounted for 33.5% and 30.4% of total exports, respectively. Furthermore, exports to Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam, respectively, amounted to 7.9%, 4.1%, and 3.6%, respectively, suggesting that mackerel was processed in these countries and then reimported.