Potential solutions to reduce the impact of Covid-19 or similar crisis in the future48

The processing plant informant said that diversification is important, to have different categories of fish, not only focus on one product and expand consumption because people want all type of fish. Before Covid-19, cod products accounted for 70 % of the company’s product portfolio of white fish. Now cod only account for 40 %. To avoid this issue in the future the company wants to decrease its focus on only cod. By doing that, it is possible to avoid problems during crises, if you have more products is possible to sell different products and by doing that it is easier to avoid financial problems.

If we look at the answer of the informants to the last question referred about the sales in 2021 and their thoughts of, where they are going to be (frozen and fresh). Processing plant informants referred to fresh cod, that their sales have increased by 25 % in these months of 2021. So, the future for fresh cod in the opinion of the processing plant informant is good. This can be seen on Image 24, where there is a black line that is 2020 sales and blue columns are 2021 sales, and as can be seen these first months of the year for the fresh cod on this company has been good.

49 Image 24 Fresh cod sales in April 2021

Referred to the Frozen, processing plant informant says that 2021 will be higher than 2020, because in 2020 there was a lockdown and the Horeca were closed, but in 2021 it will get better because, the lockdowns will be less severe and the effects on Horeca are not going to be so bad, and there will be sales on that sector.

Cod is a fish that is not cheap and in the Horeca sector the cod is used on dinner menus, so the volume is in this sector. Now the sector starts to open again and must be better than 2020 but not the same as 2019 because it starting and need to stabilize in order to reach the same peaks of volume as 2019.

Thinking on the future of fresh and frozen, the retail informant says that this was a difficult situation for all the sectors, but the consumption will change due to the lockdowns, people that stays at home, will save more money, so they will buy more products, not caring about the price, but there will be promotions for wild seafood to promote, and invest in promotion in cod and Skrei. This is because they want to take advantage of that to get more sales and try to maintain their position on the market.

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4. Discussion

During the previous chapters, it is possible to get an idea of the challenges that Covid-19 put on the economy and the companies of Spain. Now is important to look to the questions, what has been written trough the thesis and the answers of the informants and establish connections between them, to have a better understanding of the influence of Covid on the seafood sector.

4.1 General impact of Covid-19 to Spanish cod market

Throughout this thesis, it can be read that cod is an important fish for Spanish society and culture. It is consumed in the most important regions of the country and is rooted in gastronomy and typical dishes.

This can also be seen in the quantities that are imported from Norway, the data confirms the large quantities of cod arrived in Spain every year. During the interviews, is possible to read the types of cod products that are produced in Spain, fresh, Frozen, and salted cod. All three products continue to be among the most imported into Spain, both for processing and retail sector.

The impact of Covid is something that was everywhere, there is no sector on the economics that was not affected by the pandemic. The world economy faced a lack in supply stock, and because of this some factories were forced to shut down (Chowdhury et al., 2020). The lockdowns that were imposed by the governments affected the sales of the companies, because there was a disruption of the normal activities. These disruptions affect transport, production, distribution of the goods, and if one of this is affected the entire supply chain is affected.

51 Image 25 Covid 19 Disruptions on seafood supply chains (Love et al., 2020)

As can be seen in Image 25, Covid caused global disruptions in the seafood supply chains. In the case of Spain Horeca was severely affected, because of this connection through the supply chain, a lot of wholesalers, processors, distributors that heavily relied on Horeca were affected by this issue.

The retail segment became more important during Covid because the lockdowns forced consumers to go to the supermarkets to buy food because they did not know how long they would stay under the lockdown. This also made consumers buy food in big quantities. During the interviews the informants told that the Horeca sector was the one that was most affected in Spain. According to the processing company respondent, the turnover in Horeca decreased by 60%, because a lot of restaurants and hotels were closed during months and there were no movements in this sector. Their response to this was to focus on the retail and develop new products. This showed that the company was able to adapt to the changes in the market. In the

52 interview, the processing company and retail, confirm that there was a change in the products that were sold, there was an adaptation to the demand from the consumers. For example, to avoid queues at the fishmongers in the supermarket, cod was sold in pre-packed bags.

4.2 Impact of covid-19 on sales of frozen cod products

Frozen cod was beneficiated by the Covid-19 because there was a rise on the imports to Spain.

According to the interviews this was because the retail consumption of frozen products increased. Consumers bought frozen fish because it was easier to take than other products, they arrive on the supermarket, they take it, and they leave, supermarkets on that time, were Red Spots, so consumers need to enter and go out as fast as they can, also is important to add that frozen fish, can stay longer on the fridge, so, sales on frozen food increase easily due the facility for buying this type of products.

4.3 Impact of covid-19 on sales of fresh cod products

The fresh cod sales during 2019 and 2020 (pandemic year) was roughly the same. The processing company informant said that the sales were normal until the lockdown because the moment that Covid appears on the statistics was the same time as the peak season of fresh cod imports.

According to these results the reason that Covid-19 did not influence imports of fresh cod was that during peak consumption season of fresh cod, people bought everything in the supermarkets. This was due to the change on the out-home consumption to in-home consumption during lockdowns. This was a good opportunity for the retail sector to sell more because there were no more places where people can consume fresh fish, they only can buy it on the stores.

4.4 Impact of covid-19 on the Skrei sales in Spain

Skrei sales were at the same level as the year before; Skrei is an important selling point on Spain, is a fish that is really deep on the market and is too difficult to move out the market, the numbers on the tables can certify this affirmation. The response was that despite of the table

53 shows a 0 on the weeks of the lockdown the say that they sold fish on that time of the year, so the idea of the Skrei is a fish that has good sales is true and was confirmed during the interviews.

Skrei is sold at hotels and it is on the menus of restaurants, but during Covid the sales on this sector were zero, because of the lockdowns but this don’t affect into the general number of importations.

The success of this product during Covid, was that when the lockdowns start, it was on the middle of the campaign and it was difficult to stop the sales to 0 on a product that import 120 Tn per week.

4.5 Strategies followed to handle the effect of Covid-19 on demand of cod

One of the most important things is to solve the problems that Covid-19 has caused. The disruptions that appear in the supply chains due to the lack of goods, means that companies must find solutions to remove these problems. Their respond to this was to work with less months of forecast, they normally work with 4 months of stock for frozen products and now they manage to work with one, to avoid have goods in cold store more time than is needed.

According to these results companies in the same situation must reduce their stocks and sell what they have. Also, they must take notes on the changes that the retail sector made on the frozen products, like the prepacked bags and the individual packages of frozen cod.

Also happen the same in the fresh products that are on the food counters of the fishmongers on the supermarket, with these prepacked bags, it was easier for the consumers look which one they would like to take and leave the supermarket. These changes helped to consumers and also helped retail to do things well during Covid, in order to maintain the hygienic rules and also, maintain their sales.