With crab season on the line, seafood producers' association digs in its heels on price

The trade association representingNewfoundland and Labrador's seafood processors says each day fishermen keep their boats tied up in the hopes of getting a better crab price is only making an already dire season worse.

Jeff Loder, executive director of the Association of Seafood Producerssaid Monday the crab market has softened in the past few weeks, and the group will notnegotiatea new price with fishermen.

"The market has collapsed. Prices need to reflect that," he said.

Lodersaid each day the industry is delayed with fishermen in the Maritimes and Quebec already out on the water the worse it isfor everyone.

"Snow crab is not selling. There's a glut in inventory," said Loder,speaking for the first time since the provincial price-setting panel set a minimum price of $2.20 Cdn per pound for harvesters, who responded with protests and say they can't afford to fish for that price.

"Every single day that we are not fishing, we are compounding the complexities and the difficulties associated with the snow crab fishery."

The market system encourages competition, he said, and as the market works its way through the inventory, prices should rise.

"That competition will happen, and prices will go up, and there will be incremental and differential payments if the market does go up," he said, adding other provinces' fisheries are the ones getting their product to buyers.

Newfoundland and Labrador producers are at the point where they are considering what will happen if the snow crab fishery doesn't begin immediately, said Loder.

"We cannot employ people and we cannot pay wages when we do not have product coming into plants," he said.

Lodersaid processors employ roughly 5,000 people in processing plants.

"We need raw material to get those plants going, and to have any chance to compete with our competitors in Atlantic Canada, who are all fishing in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. at $2.25 a pound," he said.

The $2.20 price was set when the market price was $5.75 US about $7.79 Cdn. It has since dropped to $4.80 US (about $6.50 Cdn). Loder also noted it takes just over 1 pounds of raw crab to produce one pound of market-value processed crab so a pound of processed crab actually costs producers $3.38 Cdn per pound.

Fish, Food & Allied Workers president Greg Pretty wasn't buying the association's warning that the season is slipping away.

"We're two weeks into this. It usually takes him a month to get that whiny and petulant," he said. "The issue here, of course, is $2.20 is non-fishable for our harvesters."

He blamed the producers for downloading all of the consequences of the market glut onto fishermen.

"On a terrible marketsituation, they want to get fishing right away. Well, they really don't care about the harvesters anymore, that was quite clear," said Pretty.

Newfoundland and Labrador needs a crab marketing board, he said.

"We can't have processors who are dumpingcrab into the American market for two months at prices under $5 and then coming back to us in a press conference and saying, 'Oh, we can only afford to pay $2.20.' Well, that's nonsensical for the largest crab fishery on the planet," he said.

"There has to be more structure and regulation, so we're going to ask the province for a crab marketing board to start doing this thing right."

As for how long fishermen will hold out, Pretty said the union will keep watching the market price for crab and see what happens.

WATCH | Association of Seafood Producers executive director Jeff Loder nixes the idea of a fall crab fishery:

N.L. seafood producers say no to fall snow crab fishery

1 year ago

Duration 2:00

With snow crab prices at a near-decade low and harvesters keeping their boats tied up, producers' association president Jeff Loder said they're looking at what happens if the fishery doesn't begin immediately.

One suggestion that's been floated is to hold a fall crab fishery, in the hopes that the market supply will have been depleted, driving prices up. But,Lodersaid, producers won't agree to a fall fishery.

"Newfoundland and Labrador crab producers will not be buying snow crab in the fall of 2023 under any circumstances," he said. "The solution in a market where prices are dropping is not to condense a fishery at the time of the year when your product is in its least best form."

Fall fishing would present challenges to the industry, he said.

"Fishing in the fall introduces various quality issues," Loder said."Our grading system would need to be changed to deal with things like new, hard shell, and we will have a free-for-all of product coming in at the end of the year, creating inventory that will lead into next year, when the primary sales season, which has started now and runs till September, is over."

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