A new brand Russian Fish promoting domestic seafood was launched at a week-long fish festival in Moscow recently.
Fishermen from more than 30 regions of the country displayed their products at the first All-Russian Festival of Fishery Products in Moscow that lasted for seven days. Besides providing customers with fish products the purpose of the event was to create a nationwide brand Russian Fish. The Federal Agency for Fisheries initiated the development of the Russian Fish brand to promote domestic fish products on the home market.
Russian Fish is not a commercial brand and will not influence the production cost, nor will it be compulsory to use it, says Kseniya Timakova, head of the Press Service of the Federal Agency for Fisheries. We expect that focusing consumer preference towards domestic fish will make distributors and restaurateurs work more actively with Russian fishermen and will encourage the supply on the home market and increase fish consumption. The brand was first introduced in the course of the pilot Fish Week Festival in Moscow organised by the Federal Agency for Fisheries together with the Moscow Government and fishery companies. The project targets at promoting Russian fish, increasing its availability for the people, and forming healthy dietary habits. During the festival representatives of fishing and fish processing companies could meet and negotiate with Moscow retailers and restaurateurs. Similar events aimed at promoting Russian fish are planned for various regions of Russia. On the first day of the festival in Moscow about 50 tonnes of domestic fish and seafood products were sold at special sites in the centre of the city, and more than 300 tonnes were sold in markets and fairs over four days.
The programme of marketing Russian fish cannot be implemented without dealing with logistics and infrastructure problems. One of those is transporting fish from the Russian Far East to the European part of Russia. To solve it Federal Agency for Fisheries suggests that railway rates on transporting fish products in reefers and ordinary containers should be similar. Currently tariffs on reefer transport are 35 to 50% higher while the railroad expenses are the same; however, reefer transporting is the best possible way for preserving the fish quality. Besides, the Northern Sea Route could become an additional fish transportation channel. Another important task is the reconstruction and modernisation of fishing ports built in Soviet days. It should become profitable and convenient for Russian fishermen to land fish in Russian ports instead of going to Korean or Chinese harbours. The fish and seafood harvests in Russia has been demonstrating good results since the beginning of the year. As of March 5, 2015 the total catch in Russia increased by 5% compared to last year and equalled 915 thousand tonnes. In January 2015, the volume of fish production grew by 7.8% to 300 thousand tonnes compared to the same period last year.