Russia Revises Fishery Development Strategy: Import Demand Surges, Fishery Processing Highly Dependent On Overseas Supply

In February 2025, the Russian Federation Government made major revisions to the Strategy for the Development of the Agricultural, Industrial and Fishery Complex to 2030 (hereinafter referred to as the Strategy). The new version of the Strategy sets two development scenarios: a basic version and a conservative version. According to the analysis of the Russian Fisheries Union (Rybny Soyuz), to achieve the goals of the new version of the Strategy, Russia's imports of fish and seafood will increase significantly, with the basic version expected to increase by 1.7 times compared to 2023 and the conservative version to increase by 1.5 times.

The fish production target has been greatly increased, and the supply of raw materials has become a challenge.

The new version of the Strategy proposes that by 2030, the total agricultural output will increase by 25% compared with 2021 in the basic scenario and 13.5% in the conservative scenario. Specifically for the aquatic product processing industry, Russia's production of processed and canned fish, crustaceans and molluscs in 2021 was 4.36 million tons. The new version targets are as follows:

However, the premise for achieving this growth is to ensure sufficient supply of raw materials. Based on the conversion coefficient of processed products and raw materials provided by the Russian Statistics Bureau (Rosstat) (an average of 1.57 from 2011 to 2023), the total amount of raw materials required for the production target in 2030 is calculated:

Russia's fishery raw materials mainly come from marine fishing, aquaculture production and imports. The new version of the Strategy sets clear growth targets for the former two:

From the data, it can be seen that domestic supply is far lower than the demand for raw materials, and the gap must be filled through imports.

The demand for imports has surged, and fishery processing is highly dependent on overseas supply

According to data from the Russian Statistics Service (Rosstat), Russia imported 1.43 million tons of fish and seafood in 2023. According to the goals of the new version of the Strategy, by 2030, import demand will increase significantly:

In order to achieve this goal, the Russian government clearly stated in the new version of the Strategy that **"ensure the availability of high-quality raw materials, including supplies from abroad"**, indicating that Russia will significantly increase imports of fish and seafood in the next few years to meet domestic processing needs.

Future Outlook: The fishery development path turns to globalization

The adjustment of the new version of the Strategy reflects the major changes in Russia's fishery development strategy. Although Russia has rich fishery resources in the Far East and Arctic waters, domestic supply still cannot meet demand to support the expansion of the processing industry, and imports will become a key supplement.

In the short term, Russia may increase imports from South America (such as Chile and Ecuador), Asia (such as China and Vietnam) and Nordic countries, while actively signing fishery cooperation agreements to ensure a long-term stable overseas supply chain. In the long term, Russia may accelerate the development of domestic aquaculture to reduce its dependence on imports. However, according to current data, before 2030, Russia's fishery processing industry will become increasingly dependent on the international market, and the proportion of imports will continue to rise.

In the next few years, how Russia's fishery policy will be adjusted and how the global market will respond to this change is still worthy of continued attention.