Prices edge up: High demand, tight supplies driving seafood costs skyward

摘要

Wholesale seafood prices have risen steadily over the past decade, and processors have passed the costs onto their customers and struggled with a frequent dearth of raw material Prices of unprocessed and packaged fish jumped 8 percent between February2006 and Feb-- ruary 2007, according to the Producer Price Index. Despite these price hikes, overall demand for seafood has remained strong, according to seafood processors. In this commodity-driven business, changes in wholesale prices are passed through to the consumer by supermarkets, says Steve Lutz, executive VP of the Perishables Group in Chicago, which tracks retail seafood data from supermarkets across the United States.