A “loophole” in UK government policy means consumers are still eating Russian white fish, despite the imposition of a 35% tariff on imports in the wake of the country’s 2022 Ukraine invasion.
Imports from Russia into the UK have declined by 59% in the past year, revealed new data from the Norwegian Seafood Council, presented at its annual UK Norway Seafood Summit this week.
But at the same time, imports had increased by 11% from China, a common processor of Russian white fish.
Currently, the UK does not have any sanctions imposed on Russian white fish coming into the nation via a third party, such as China.
“There is a loophole there and we saw more volumes of cod coming from China into the UK last year, so it could continue,” said Eivind H Brækkan, seafood analyst at the NSC this week.
And this may rise further, as before Christmas the US introduced a complete ban on all imports of Russian white fish, whether direct or via a third-party nation.
According to Brækkan, this means there is about 90,000 tonnes of product which will need a new destination and there is “a lot of opportunity to fill that gap”.
“Russians have got to find new markets, or the Chinese, for the Russian fish,” he explained.
The EU also imposes a tariff on Russian white fish entering via a third-party processing nation of between 7.5% and 12%.
These changes in the political landscape meant that “over time, the Russians would want to find new markets where they are not paying these tariffs”, said Brækkan.
At the summit, UK fisheries minister Mark Spencer said the government was not ruling out further sanctions as “we do need to send strong messages to the Russian government”.
“It is something that certainly we are considering, and we will see how much cod is going by that route,” he added.
Last year, Andrew Crook, president of the National Federation of Fish Friers had warned that the 35% tariff on fish sourced from Russia and Belarus, implemented after the invasion of Ukraine, “had not worked”.
The government hadn’t taken into consideration that the majority of Russian whitefish going into supermarkets is processed in China (to the tune of between 160,000 and 170,000 tonnes of whitefish per year), and is therefore ineligible for the tariff, he argued.
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