Irma to scatter Chilean salmon all over US, threaten prices

Combination of high salmon prices and aquaculture puts this year in record territory

Hurricane Irma may have dropped to a Category 4 storm due to a small loss in wind speed, but it's looking more and more likely headed to southern Florida where it is expected to disrupt the seafood industry, especially the sale of Chilean salmon.

Salmones Blumar hopes to have all of its fresh Chilean salmon out of its Miami, Florida, warehouse by Friday morning, two days before Hurricane Irma’s expected arrival, Sebastian Goycoolea Nagel, CEO of Blumar USA, the US division of the Puerto Montt, Chile-based producer, told Undercurrent News Thursday morning.

Two days-worth of orders have been cancelled, said Nagel, who talked to Undercurrent from his car as he was driving north with his family to escape the impending wrath of the storm. Everything else is headed to Los Angeles (California) International Airport or airports in one of several other cities Blumar normally sends its products, including New York City, Dallas and Houston, Texas. Frozen salmon is being kept in Miami, with prayers that emergency generators will outlast the storm.

Nagel is concerned about a flood of Chilean product hitting the West Coast, as many other producers are taking the same approach. But the big question, he said, is how long will Miami International Airport be closed.

Blumar moves 50,000 to 80,000 pounds of salmon per day, 60% of it through Miami.

Florida has had its share of hurricanes, but the Chilean farmed Atlantic salmon industry is in uncharted territory when it comes to dealing with a hurricane as threatening as Irma. The storm, which has lost just 5 miles per hour off its earlier 185 mph winds and has been downgraded to a Category 4, is still expected to hit southern Florida on Sunday morning after pounding the Turks and Caicos Islands southeast of the Bahamas.

As reported earlier by Undercurrent, the Miami airport is a major hub for the product. As many as eight to 10 importers count on it for flying in 50,000 to 100,000 pounds of Chilean salmon per day, according to one source.

“This is new to everyone,” Nagel said of the logistics challenges. ”We have no idea how long this is going to go on.”

After 10 hours of sitting in traffic, Nagel said he wasn’t exactly sure where he was or how much longer his drive to Alabama might take. It's just another one of the unknowns about Irma.

Take higher prices 'to the bank'

If the Houston Airport’s response to Hurricane Harvey is an indication, the Miami airport could be closed for at least four days, noted Jon Rezny, vice president of purchasing for Fortune Fish, in Bensenville, Ill. That would mean no Chilean salmon coming out of Miami until late next week.

Fortune, which moves more than 150 cases of Chilean salmon on a weekly basis, expects some of his six to eight regular suppliers to send their products to Boston, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles, but wouldn’t be surprised to have a few transport salmon directly to the dealer by flying it into Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He doesn’t expect to have much product available on Monday, however.

Might Irma cause an increase in the prices of salmon across the board? Rezny recalls how disease issues in Chile in 2009 pushed sales of salmon from Canada and other places. He’s anxious to see if European prices for salmon are higher on Friday morning.

But Tim Lycke, the owner of Incredible Fish, a Miami-based seafood importer and exporter, said Thursday that you can take supply shortages and price increases “to the bank.” Multiexport Foods, one of his Chilean-based suppliers, has announced that it will stop harvesting through Tuesday, he noted.

It won’t just be salmon in short supply, Lycke warned.  

"Miami is the gateway for all seafood from Central and South America,” he said. “There is not any precedent for this.”

A city 'focused on basic survival'

Pesquera Camanchaca, a Santiago, Chile-based supplier of farmed Atlantic salmon and other seafood products, told its customers Wednesday that it was informed by its trucking partners that they will cease picking up in Miami on Friday at 7 p.m.

Bert Bachmann, Camanchaca's US strategic development director, had little else to report on Thursday, except to say that “right now many flights into Miami for tomorrow are being delayed or outright cancelled, so we don’t have much fresh salmon to work with in Miami. Alternate cities are still being worked."

“The whole city of Miami and in fact all of Florida is focused on basic survival,” Bachman added.

Edgard Beyer, CEO of Patagonia Sea Farms, a joint venture between two family owned salmon farming companies in Chile, told Undercurrent that 20% to 25% of his orders of Chilean salmon have been cancelled. The Miami-based executive likewise was hustling on Thursday to get his products to alternative destinations, including Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, Georgia. He said his customers have been “very understanding of how serious the situation is. They know we are trying to do as much as we can.”

Miami normally handles 75% of Patagonia’s Chilean salmon, he said.

Like Blumar’s eight workers in Miami, Patagonia’s 10 employees there were sent home on Wednesday.