Where does fishmeal come from?

This page has no production-by-country table. Reduction-fishery output is reported through FAO fisheries statistics, which this site does not yet carry, so everything below about where fishmeal originates is built from the export data rather than from catch or plant output. Read the country figures accordingly: they show who ships fishmeal across a border, not who lands the fish, and they understate countries that make meal and feed it to their own farms.

Fishmeal is small oily fish, cooked, pressed, dried and ground into a brown powder of roughly 62 to 68 percent protein. The species are the ones that shoal in dense, single-species masses near the surface: Peruvian anchoveta above all, then Chilean jack mackerel, North Sea and Baltic sandeel, sprat and Norway pout, Atlantic and Pacific herring, capelin, blue whiting, Gulf and Atlantic menhaden, and West African sardinella. A growing share comes not from a directed fishery at all but from trimmings, heads and frames left over when other fish are filleted, which is why Vietnam, Norway and India appear in the trade data without operating large reduction fleets.

In 2024 Peru led exports of fish and crustacean meals with 26% of the $6.3 billion traded, ahead of Chile on 7.8%, Denmark on 7%, Russia on 4.9% and Vietnam on 4.8% (CEPII BACI). The wider heading this page uses, HS 2301, covers meals of meat as well as of fish, which is why its table looks different: exports were worth $9.4 billion in 2024 with Peru first on 17% and United States second on 11%, the latter mostly on meat and bone meal rather than fishmeal.

Peru's position rests on the Humboldt Current, where wind drives surface water offshore and cold, nutrient-laden water rises to replace it, feeding a plankton bloom that supports the largest single-species fishery in the world. Access to it is rationed. The state research institute surveys anchoveta biomass with acoustic vessels before each of the two annual seasons, roughly April to July in the north-central zone and November to January, and the fisheries ministry then sets a total allowable catch. Since 2008 that catch has been divided into individual vessel quotas rather than fished as a race, which spread landings over months and improved raw material freshness. If a survey finds a small biomass or a high proportion of juveniles, the ministry can cut the quota, close the season early or cancel it outright, and because Peru supplies about a quarter of the fishmeal that crosses borders, that single administrative decision moves the world price more than any harvest anywhere else.

The buying side is more concentrated than the selling side. China took 48% of world imports of fish meals by value in 2024, followed by Norway on 6.9%, Japan on 4.3%, Turkey (Türkiye) on 4% and United Kingdom on 3.3% (CEPII BACI). Chinese aquaculture and its pig sector absorb close to half the traded volume, so Chinese port stocks and buying interest are the demand-side variable everyone watches. On the broader HS 2301 basket, which includes meat meals, China took 35% and Vietnam 6% of $9.4 billion.

Several countries appear on both sides. Norway lands industrial species and makes meal, and also buys a great deal of it for salmon feed; Vietnam produces by-product meal from its pangasius and shrimp processing and imports higher-grade meal for the same feed mills; Denmark's plants in Skagen and Esbjerg run North Sea sandeel, sprat and blue whiting and ship meal into Norwegian and Scottish salmon feed. Peru and Chile are the pure exporters, selling almost everything they make, and West African plants in Mauritania and Morocco have grown into the trade on sardinella since the 2010s. Fish oil, pressed out during the same process, is a separate and far more valuable trade per tonne, sold into salmon feed and omega-3 supplements, and a plant's economics depend on both products together.

Fishmeal has no futures contract. Prices are assessed by reporting agencies from physical deals, quoted in dollars per tonne either FOB Peru or CIF China and Northern Europe, and grades are defined by protein content, freshness and processing temperature. Peruvian meal is sold as super prime, prime, thermal or standard, distinguished by the total volatile nitrogen and histamine in the raw fish at landing and by drying method, since steam drying preserves amino acid digestibility that flame drying degrades. A cargo is specified by protein percentage, moisture, fat, ash, salt and sand, digestibility and antioxidant treatment, and it is sold in one-tonne bags or 50 kilogram sacks rather than in bulk holds.

The series used here is Any origin, 64-65% protein, CIF Hamburg, which stood at $2,500/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is also the series' nominal record, $2,500/t in August 2026; adjusted for US consumer prices the peak was $2,608/t in January 2013, so in real terms the earlier spike was the larger one. The low since the series began in 1979 was $254/t in July 1985. Over ten years the series was +62% and over five +66%.

Two things to hold apart when reading a fishmeal quote. First, meal made from whole fish and meal made from processing trimmings are not the same product: trimmings meal has lower and more variable protein, a different amino acid balance and less oil, and it trades at a discount, but it is the fastest-growing part of supply. Second, fishmeal's price ceiling is set outside its own market. Feed formulators can cut inclusion rates and substitute soybean meal, poultry by-product meal and synthetic amino acids for part of the protein, so the fishmeal-to-soybean-meal ratio, rather than the absolute price, is what determines how much demand survives a rally.

Peru's research institute surveys anchoveta biomass before each of the two annual seasons and the fisheries ministry sets a catch limit, which it can cut, suspend or cancel if the survey finds too little fish or too many juveniles. Because Peru supplies about a quarter of the fishmeal that crosses borders, and because the decision arrives as an announcement rather than as a gradual shortfall, the price can move by double digits within days of a survey result. No other supplier can add volume quickly enough to offset it.

In an El Nino year warm water pushes over the cold upwelling off Peru, the plankton bloom fails, and anchoveta scatter, move deeper or fail to spawn. The fishery has collapsed on this cycle before, most severely in the early 1970s. Forecasts of sea surface temperature anomalies therefore trade as supply forecasts months ahead of any actual shortfall, and the market prices the probability of a cancelled season rather than waiting for one.

China buys close to half the fishmeal that crosses a border, for farmed shrimp, marine fish and eels and for piglet starter diets. Its port inventories are published and watched closely: a large stock overhang lets buyers stay out of the market through a Peruvian season, while low stocks force them to chase cargoes. Because a single country's purchasing decisions clear so much of world supply, Chinese demand can hold prices up through a good fishing season or cap them through a bad one.

Feed formulators use fishmeal for its amino acid profile and palatability, not because it is irreplaceable, and they respond to price by cutting inclusion rates and making up the protein with soybean meal, poultry by-product meal and synthetic lysine and methionine. That substitution sets the effective ceiling on fishmeal. When the ratio of fishmeal to soybean meal prices widens far enough, formulations change within a feed season, and the demand lost does not return immediately when the price falls.

A growing share of supply comes from trimmings left after filleting other fish rather than from directed fisheries, which adds volume without any new fishing effort but at lower and more variable protein. Alongside it, insect meal, single-cell protein, fermented bacterial biomass and algal oils have taken small shares of aquafeed formulations. Neither stream replaces whole-fish meal at scale, but both blunt the top of price spikes by giving formulators somewhere else to go.

The Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic reduction fisheries run on quotas set from scientific advice for sandeel, sprat, Norway pout, capelin and blue whiting, and those stocks fluctuate sharply with recruitment. Some are shared across national boundaries, and when coastal states cannot agree a sharing arrangement, the sum of unilateral quotas exceeds the advice. The result is a supply source that swings on committee decisions and stock assessments as much as on weather.

A reduction plant sells meal and oil from the same fish, and fish oil is worth several times more per tonne because salmon feed and omega-3 supplements compete for it. When oil is strong, plants can afford to buy raw fish that meal alone would not justify, which keeps meal supply flowing; when oil is weak, marginal plants stop. The two products also respond to different customers, so meal and oil prices regularly diverge even though their supply is fixed in a single ratio.

Plants in Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia and Morocco have grown into the export trade on sardinella, buying fish that local markets also eat. That has drawn sustained criticism and periodic regulatory response, including restrictions on which species may be reduced and on foreign vessel access. Because the region has become a meaningful supplier, changes to access agreements or to landing rules there affect a market otherwise dominated by the South Pacific and the North Sea.

A reduction fishery is a race against decay. Anchoveta caught by purse seine are pumped into refrigerated seawater holds and must reach the plant within hours, because protein quality is measured by how little the fish has broken down: total volatile nitrogen and histamine rise from the moment of capture, and the difference between super prime and standard meal is set on the boat, not in the factory. Vessels land at plants strung along the coast, and the fish is pumped ashore and weighed.

In the plant the fish is cooked with steam at around 95 degrees Celsius, which coagulates the protein and ruptures the cells so that oil and water can be squeezed out. A twin-screw press separates a solid presscake from a liquid press liquor. The liquor is decanted and centrifuged into crude fish oil and a watery fraction called stickwater, which is evaporated down to a concentrate of about 40 percent solids and added back to the presscake; meal made this way is called whole meal and captures protein that would otherwise be discharged. The recombined cake is dried, either by indirect steam at low temperature, which preserves digestibility and is what prime grades require, or by direct flame at higher temperature, which is cheaper and degrades amino acids.

Dried meal is milled to a uniform particle size, treated with an antioxidant such as ethoxyquin or a tocopherol blend to stop the residual oil from self-heating in storage, cooled, and packed into 50 kilogram sacks or one-tonne bulk bags. Roughly a fifth to a quarter of the live weight of anchoveta becomes meal and about 5 percent becomes oil, the remainder leaving as water. Crude fish oil is separately refined, and where it is destined for supplements it is winterized, deodorized and concentrated into ethyl esters or triglycerides with elevated EPA and DHA content. By-product plants attached to filleting operations run the same steps on heads, frames and viscera, with lower and more variable yields.

Fishmeal used to be a pig and poultry feed and is now overwhelmingly an aquaculture ingredient. It goes into feed for farmed salmon and trout, marine fish such as sea bass and sea bream, shrimp, and eels, where its amino acid profile, palatability and digestibility let a formulator hit performance targets that plant proteins alone cannot reach, particularly in the first weeks of a fish's life. Its remaining terrestrial market is concentrated in the same place: piglet starter and broiler starter diets, where young animals with immature digestive systems need highly digestible protein.

The inclusion rates have fallen a long way. Salmon diets that were once built on fishmeal now use it as a minor ingredient alongside soy protein concentrate, rapeseed meal, poultry by-product meal and synthetic amino acids, and the same substitution has run through shrimp feed. Fish oil, the co-product, follows the opposite path: it remains hard to replace in salmon diets because of its long-chain omega-3 content, and it competes with the human supplement market for the same tonnes. Pet food takes a small premium share, and hydrolysates and fish protein concentrates made by the same industry are sold into aquaculture starter feeds and pet palatants.

Processing sits on the beach. Peru's plants line the coast at Chimbote, Chancay, Callao, Pisco and Paita, close enough to the fishing grounds that a vessel can land within hours; Chile's cluster around Iquique and Talcahuano; Denmark's at Skagen, Hanstholm and Esbjerg; Norway's, Iceland's and the Faroes' at their own landing ports; and West Africa's at Nouadhibou and along the Moroccan and Senegalese coast. That geography is not a choice. Because raw fish quality falls by the hour, the plant must be near the boat, and the whole industry is therefore a set of coastal clusters with no ability to relocate when a fishery moves.

Meal moves in bags rather than in bulk holds, in containers or in bagged breakbulk parcels, from Callao and Chimbote across the Pacific to Chinese ports, to Vietnam and to Japan, and from Danish and Norwegian ports by short sea into Scotland, Norway and the Faroes. The Peru to China route carries the largest single flow, and container availability and freight rates on it are a real component of the delivered price. Fish oil travels separately in parcel tankers and in flexitanks.

The concentration runs in both directions and there is nothing behind it. One country supplies about a quarter of world fish meal exports from a single species in a single current system that fails on a climate cycle; one country buys close to half of what is traded. There is no futures contract to hedge with, no strategic reserve, and no substitute that matches the amino acid and omega-3 profile at the volumes aquaculture needs. The market's only real shock absorber is the feed formulator's ability to lower inclusion rates, which is a slow, partial and one-way adjustment.