Nordic Halibut, a halibut-farming company based in Norway, said in a Q2 2024 operational update that it continued to see strong pricing for its latest harvests, even though those prices dropped year over year.
The company said it experienced a planned decline in harvest weights as part of its strategy to distribute weights in response to market signals. The company had an average harvest weight in Q2 2024 of 4.5 kilograms (4.1 kilograms head-on gutted) compared to an average of 5.2 kilograms (4.7 kilograms head-on gutted) in Q2 2023.
The lower harvest weight resulted in a lower average sales prices of NOK 153 (USD 14.24, EUR 13.03) per kilogram, down 1.2 percent from Q2 2023 and down from the NOK 163 (USD 15.17, EUR 13.88) the company received per kilogram in Q1 2024.
Harvest volumes in the quarter reached 140 metric tons (MT), with total revenue in Q2 2024 reaching NOK 19.1 million (USD 1.7 million, EUR 1.6 million) – down from the 151 MT harvested and NOK 21 million (USD 1.9 million, EUR 1.8 million) brought in in Q2 2023.
The company said it plans to continue following its strategy of optimizing harvest weights in response to market signals, despite the drops in revenue.
“The overarching objective remains to optimize the utilization of available biomass, reaffirming our commitment to long-term goals, even if it entails potential impacts on short-term harvest volumes,” the company said.
Overall, though, the company, in its FY2023 results, said that it has refined its commercial strategy to focus on price premiums for larger-sized farmed halibut. That strategy has resulted in lower harvests for multiple quarters, but the company said customers have shown willingness to pay premium prices for larger halibut.
“The primary focus of Nordic Halibut's revised strategy is to ...