Estonia

DGM Shipping is a successful processor of Baltic herring and sprat. Three years ago the company was nominated for the Prix d’Elite at the European Seafood Exposition in Brussels for one of its products. This year the company has just returned from Prodexpo in Moscow with a Gran-Prix for a similar creation.

Avektra is a 15-year-old Estonian company specialised in processing Norwegian salmon and trout, which is frozen, smoked and marinated for sale on markets in Western Europe.

Since last year Olavi Petron has had to deal with a series of critical issues in the fisheries sector with international repercussions. In January 2014 Russian veterinary authorities found that some Estonian fish processing factories did not comply with their standards and rescinded the plants’ export permits. In August sanctions imposed by the west on Russia sparked a ban on imports of certain fisheries products to Russia from the EU, which also affected Estonian processors. The ban is still in place and the Estonian authorities are using different strategies to assist the sector.

The Estonian Rural Development Foundation was established in 1993 with funds from various donors that became available when the country became independent. Today, the foundation is using these funds to implement programmes that support the economic development of rural Estonia.

The Hunt-Fish group has a track record selling perch fillets to buyers in the Swiss retail sector. At the end of last year the company together with perch fishermen invested in a processing facility to produce fresh perch fillets thereby removing two links in the value chain.

Estonian independence in 1991 led to the creation of a number of private companies in the fisheries sector. Among them was Pärnu Laht which started its operations processing the freshwater fish perch and pike-perch and selling the fillets to Western Europe. Since then the company has faced a number of ups and downs and today is working on the farmed production of perch.

The fisheries sector in Estonia comprises marine and inland fisheries, freshwater aquaculture, and a processing industry. The marine fishery is further subdivided into the catches from the high seas, and the Baltic Sea. The former are sourced in the North-West Atlantic (NAFO), the North-East Atlantic (NEAFC), and Svalbard. The Baltic Sea fishery has two main components, a coastal fishery and an offshore pelagic fishery. In terms of volumes of fish caught, around two thirds of the total Estonian landings come from the Baltic Sea pelagic fishery, where the main species are Baltic herring and sprat. This is followed by the distant water landings, the coastal fishery in the Baltic Sea, and finally the inland fishery.