TRADE FLOWS OF BLUEFIN TUNA COMMODITIES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

Bluefin tuna ranching is a profitable activity in the Mediterranean sea in which the most relevant countries are Spain, Malta and Croatia. Despite of the decrease in the fishing quotas due to the conservational measures implemented by the EU, limiting the amounts of final production, the industry appears to be still a good business in operational and financial terms. Exports to Japan, the main destination market continue on a regular monthly basis.

As a capture based aquaculture, the Bluefin ranching industry is strongly dependent on the supply of juveniles from the wild stocks. This makes a first difference with regard producing countries In terms of availability of juveniles provided by the domestic fleet, which has an impact on costs. As a consequence, Spain and Croatia register low or inexistent records of live Bluefin tuna imports, while the industry in Malta is almost fully dependent on juvenile imports. The impact of these imports on the price and quantities exported from Malta to Japan has been tested using price integration techniques. Results suggest that exports of final products do not follow the flows of live Bluefin tuna imports, and points to external factors affecting industry performance.

Competitive relations across producing countries have been also tested by cointegrating the prices of exports from Spain, Malta and Croatia to Japan. Although weak significance due to small sample sizes, results point to certain leadership of Spain in terms of prices. According to these results, the export prices in Malta and Croatia change after those from Spain change. Since no leadership in terms of quality has been confirmed with the available data, it seems that the Spanish leadership in prices is mainly based on the higher volumes of supply from Spain.