Value of cultivated fish production decreases

Fish farmers produced about 15 million kilograms of food fish for sale in 2020 and the value of the production was EUR 63 million, which was EUR 7 million lower than in 2019, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).

The reduction in the value of production can be attributed to such factors as the lowered price of rainbow trout and lower production volume of European whitefish.

The production of rainbow trout totalled 14.3 million kilograms, i.e. about the same amount as in the previous year.

This amounts to 95 percent of all cultivated fish production in Finland. European whitefish farming yielded 0.6 million kilograms, which is 25 percent less than in the previous year. This has a slight impact on the total value of aquaculture production, because the producer price of European whitefish is significantly higher than that of rainbow trout.

The majority of rainbow trout is farmed at sea, but a significant amount is also produced in inland fish farms. In 2020, the amount of rainbow trout farmed for sale at sea totalled 11.8 million kilograms, while the corresponding amount for inland farms was 3.2 million kilograms. In European whitefish production, the share of sea farming was one third higher than that of inland farming.

The amount of food fish cultivated for sale at sea was six percent lower than in the previous year, while inland production increased by approximately 15 percent. Inland water production has increased by nearly one third since 2017.

Nearly one half – 44 percent – of cultivated food fish was produced in Åland. The share of mainland Finland increased by a few percent from the previous year. The region of Southwest Finland accounted for one third and Åland for 56 percent in the production of food fish at sea. In inland Finland, fish farming concentrated in the regions of Kainuu, Lapland, Savonia and Central Finland.