Irish wholesaler warns cod prices nearing limit of what buyers are willing to pay

According to Nick Lynch, the CEO of Ashbourne, Ireland-based wholesale firm Nick’s Fish, rising cod prices are testing the limit of what buyers can afford and may soon lead to dropping consumption rates.
Besides dwindling supplies brought on by lowered quotas in key production areas, Lynch told SeafoodSource that prices are more recently being pressured by higher fuel prices for fishers, as well as surcharges applied by transporters. 
“Haulers have added a surcharge even though they’re getting a subsidy from the government not to add a surcharge,” he said.
The result is that Irish wholesale prices for cod are now at a multi-year high of EUR 26.00 (USD 30.60) to EUR 27.00 (USD 31.70) per kilogram for more popular size categories, Lynch said, adding that this price may represent the ceiling buyers are wiling to pay.
“We think we have hit the point of elasticity of demand for cod. We are at the limit of what people will pay for cod. If the price increases, people will just take it off the menu,” he said.
Exacerbating the issue, Lynch added that consumers’ price expectations have been distorted by the cod offered by low-cost retailers such as Aldi and Lidl in their Irish locations. 
“This is a different product. It’s defrosted Baltic cod,” he said.
On the foodservice side, cod and haddock have long been mainstays of Ireland’s fish and chip takeaway establishments, and restaurateurs are now needing to decide whether they will raise prices on consumers or find other species as a substitute.
Niall Sabongi, who operates the Seafood Café and the Salty Buoy in Dublin, said he is being forced to raise his menu prices to cover what he describes as a 50 percent increase in the cost of cod and haddock due to lower stocks and fuel price spikes. Sabongi said he plans to raise the price of a cod serving at the Salty Buoy by 15 percent.
Like Sabongi, Lynch said he sees little appetite for substitution yet and believes efforts by state agencies to promote a switch to species like dogfish are misguided. 
“Guys do my head in talking about substitution. If a client wants cod, they’re not going to use dogfish,” he said, adding that he has no intention of sourcing cheaper farmed alternatives like pangasius either.
Nevertheless, some restaurateurs in the U.K. were recently found to be using pangasius in place of cod and haddock in traditional fish and chip dishes without alerting customers to the change.