Chairman's speech to the annual meeting of Surofi on May 2, 2023

Annual meeting, chairman, guests.

Welcome to the annual meeting of the Sunnmøre and Romsdal Fishing Association and I would especially like to welcome State Secretary Vidar Ulriksen from NFD.

2022 was a very good year for Sunnmøre og Romsdal Fiskesalslag with a record turnover of NOK 3.325 billion and NOK 9.7 million in annual profit before tax. This despite the quota reduction of important fish species, the aftermath of the Covid epidemic and a brutal war of aggression in central Europe with an energy crisis and general price increases.

We can conclude that the seafood industry has performed exceptionally well through a demanding year in which a weakened Norwegian krone has been a great help.

I would like to thank the administration and board of Surofi for their great efforts throughout a turbulent year.

Although quotas for the most important fish species decreased slightly, it is worth mentioning species such as ling and tusk, which saw a pleasant increase in quantity of 3,900 tonnes as a result of our fisheries agreement with the UK early in the year. Prices for ling and tusk increased by 66% and 53% last year.

In addition, we had a shrimp fishery off East Greenland for the first time in 12 years. This fishery has traditionally been important for the local shrimp fleet and it is nice that this year there are also two vessels now fishing in these demanding waters.

Another encouraging development in 2022 is the increase in the turnover of residual raw materials by 49% in quantity and 54% in value. This shows that the fleet is quickly able to exploit new markets that are opening up and this is a particularly encouraging and important development. It is in this way that the values and activity from wild-caught fish can increase even with reduced or stable resources. The turnover of heads from Greenland halibut and blue whiting accounts for the largest part of the residual raw materials in value. As a result of this positive development, the board has chosen to address this as a separate matter at this annual meeting later today.

In our digital annual report for 2022, there is an interesting interview with CEO Gunnar Haagensen of Jangaard and newly elected chairman of the board of Sjømat Norge. Gunnar represents the strong clipfish industry that is headquartered in our district and represents the further processing of cod, saithe, ling and tusk into long-term stored traditional food, similar to the production of ham and cheese in Spain and Italy.

This market is also changing and consumers are increasingly demanding products that are more tailored to the consumer. Fewer and fewer people are buying whole clipfish and ham, but more and more are buying smaller consumer-packaged products that require less preparation and are ready to use. There is also a clear tendency in the market for products that are lightly salted from fresh or frozen fish to win over whole clipfish.

Surofi is concerned that the important clipfish industry is developing in step with the market and that it will continue to be the strongest seafood processing industry in Norway through product innovation and marketing.

The very high cost level in Norway and the customs duty of 20% for further processed consumer-ready products make it practically impossible to develop this industry in Norway, even though we would like such a development. Strong interests in both government and industry organizations propose using fishing quotas to promote such a development, but the effect will be the same as flogging a dead horse if we do not solve the challenge of high customs duties on further processed products in the central markets.

The Norwegian seafood industry will be doomed to continue supplying unprocessed seafood to Europe, Asia and other markets, as we currently make a good living from. The responsibility for changing this lies with the government and the Storting, but it is unlikely that the current government will want to make the necessary priorities to reverse this development.

Surofi, together with the Norwegian Codfish Association and the Western Norwegian Fish Market Association, has introduced a scheme where at least 50% of the quotas of cod and saithe must be sold at auction to ensure that as much raw material as possible is made available to buyers. This change has been considered successful by most.

As a result of the joint change in the rules in the sales league, the portion sold at auction has increased from 47% in 2021 to 63% in 2022 in our league. For cod, the auction portion increased from 55% to 70% and for saithe from 59 to 73%.

This change was implemented to meet the demand from the fishing industry for better access to raw materials through auctions in the sales area and to reverse a trend where more and more fish were sold on contract or through self-takeover of the catch.

This change appears to have worked as intended so far, and the change will be evaluated through a project funded by FHF during the first half of this year, and we will hopefully get a little insight into the researchers' work later today.

Before last year's annual meeting, the administration and board took a somewhat unusual step to quickly change the composition of the board. The proposal was to propose a change to the bylaws at the last annual meeting in which we urged our owner organizations to have both genders represented on the board. This work was done in good cooperation with our owner organizations.

This work led to the Surofi board today consisting of three women and four men. The board thus has more than 40% representation from each gender. As chairman of the board, I am very pleased that we were able to achieve this last year and I can confirm that the overall competence of the board is no worse now than before. We can confirm that it is entirely possible to have a modern composition of the board in a fisheries organization and I look forward to our sister organizations in the industry implementing a similar change as this is absolutely necessary to maintain our legitimacy in Norwegian society.

Despite good financial figures in Surofi's accounts, the board has not proposed changes to the membership fees for the annual meeting. However, during last week's fair in Barcelona, we received information that the Norwegian Fishing Association will present a proposal to reduce its membership fees at the annual meeting in a week. Due to this development, the board will ask the annual meeting for authorization to reduce the membership fees within a reasonable financial framework, but which takes into account the competitive situation between Surofi and the Norwegian Fishing Association.

As mentioned, Surofi has a good collaboration with the other sales associations through the cooperation body Norsk Villfisk. Managing Director Sveinung Flem has been chairman of the board of Norsk Villfisk for many years and has done a very good job of developing this collaboration. It is becoming increasingly important to develop the sales association and protect our economic interests in relation to the turnover of fish in the first place.

On behalf of the board and administration, I would like to thank you for the good cooperation with the other sales associations, industry organizations, politicians and the public fisheries administration.

Finally, I thank our fishermen for their efforts in bringing healthy and sustainable food of increasingly high quality from the sea.

02.05.2023

Tore Roaldsnes
Chairman