A happierNew Year:It may seem grim right now, but there is a lot to look forward to in 2D2I

摘要

As one of my friends put it in their Christmas card message: "1349 was even worse, of course, so we have that to be grateful for." An exaggeration perhaps but, given what everyone has gone through in 2020, perhaps only a slight one.We haven't had the full 2020 export figures for Scottish salmon yet but we know they are down, significantly, on the year before. Our members have exported less at lower prices than they wanted. They have had to change working practices, introduce new measures and add extra layers of precautions to protect their workers.But, as they say, that was then and this is now and I believe that 2021 has the potential to be as good as 2020 was bad.We hold fairly regular catch-up calls with our international counterparts from trade bodies across the world. As 2020 progressed, one of the defining features of these meetings, for me, was the increasingly pessimistic forecast for food service outlets in the United States.In April, we were told official estimates suggested 10-15% of restaurants and food outlets would close and not reopen. By June it was 20-25% and by September the estimate had reached 30%.It may well be that, by the time a final reckoning is done, a third of all food outlets in the US will have closed because of the pandemic. They may or may not ever reopen but, here's the thing: if they don't reopen, then someone else will.