An Open Reference for the Fishmeal Trade

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Trade · T1

Trade flows

Fishmeal crosses the Pacific in bulk, the Baltic in trucks, and the Gulf of Thailand in short coastal hops — three different trades wearing one name.

The big map is simple. Peru and Chile ship west: China alone takes roughly 40 percent of the global import share, and Peruvian exports — forecast at 1.08 MMT for MY2024/25 — make the Pacific leg the trade's spine.[1][2] Europe runs an internal loop: Denmark, the EU's largest producer, sends meal and oil into the salmon feed industry next door.[3] Southeast Asia trades regionally: by-product meals from Thai and Vietnamese processing plants feed shrimp farms a trucking distance away.

The Pacific leg
SA → China
Whole-fish meal, full grade ladder, bulk vessels. The flow that sets the world price of reference grades.
The European loop
DK → Norway
Industrial-species meal and oil into salmon feed — compliance and traceability priced alongside protein.
The regional hop
SEA circuits
By-product meals moving short distances to shrimp and pangasius feed — a cost trade, not a spec trade.
What moves a flow

Three forces: biology (a season's quota), regulation (import standards at the receiving port), and feed demand (which species the buying country is farming hardest). The profiles in Origins carry each country's version of those three; the market notes chapter explains why this site records the structure and not the price.

Next T2Market notes →
Sources
  1. FAO GLOBFISH news: 2024 fishmeal exports bounce back, China dominates — www.fao.org/in-action/globefish/news-events/news/news-detail/2024-fishme (accessed 2026-10-24)
  2. USDA FAS GAIN report: China's Fish Meal Sector — apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileNam (accessed 2026-10-24)
  3. USDA FAS GAIN — Oilseeds and Products Annual — apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileNam (accessed 2026-10-24)
  4. FAO fishmeal & fish oil review (openknowledge) — openknowledge.fao.org/bitstreams/70826a54-2c9e-4ab6-bb5f-4cefde630ba4/do (accessed 2026-10-24)
  5. EUMOFA — Fishmeal and fish oil, 2025 edition (EU market observatory) — fishery-aquaculture-market-observatory.ec.europa.eu (accessed 2026-10-24)
  6. Nordic report — Denmark chapter (sprat, sandeel) — pub.norden.org/temanord2026-518/4-denmark (accessed 2026-10-24)