Seafood & Fish

Canada has the longest coastline in the world and fisheries on three oceans, and the practical consequence for a buyer is that the category divides into two quite different supply models that should not be planned the same way.

Wild fisheries (lobster, snow crab, scallops, northern shrimp, groundfish) run on defined seasons with quotas set annually. Volume genuinely varies year to year, and a buyer building a continuous programme should expect to contract early in a season rather than assume spot availability. Aquaculture, principally Atlantic salmon, harvests year-round and behaves like a manufactured supply chain, which is exactly why buyers who need continuity choose it.

Two specification points recur across the whole category and are worth learning once. The first is glaze: frozen seafood carries a protective ice layer, glaze is water, and a price per kilogram that does not state the glaze percentage is not comparable to one that does. Contract on net weight after glaze. The second is the freezing method, because texture on thaw is what the end user judges and no price adjustment repairs it after arrival.

Beyond those, each species has its own grading language: size band and shell condition for lobster, count size for shrimp and scallops, dry versus treated for scallops, trim specification for salmon.

Destination establishment and consignment requirements apply here as they do to meat, and they are confirmed with the destination authority before a first shipment is planned rather than after.