By Katya Golubkova
TOKYO (Reuters) – Marubeni on Friday began selling salmon from a farm operated near mount Fuji by its Norwegian partner, marking another step in Japanese commodity trading houses’ expansion into the food business.
Wild and sea-farmed salmon is one of the areas Marubeni and its rivals have been targeting- a growth market in Japan, which aims to raise the share of locally sourced seafood it consumes to 94% in 2033 from 54% now.
Marubeni has a stake in Danish Salmon, one of the world’s top land-farmed salmon producers that focuses on the European market, and now is handling sales of Atlantic salmon for Norway’s Proximar Seafood AS, which operates Japan’s first land farm.
Proximar plans to produce 5,300 tones of salmon in 2027, or around a 10th of Japan’s annual Atlantic salmon consumption.
“By farming salmon locally in Japan, we are participating in increasing Japan’s self-sufficiency rate,” Proximar Chief Executive Joachim Nielsen told reporters.
Faced with volatile fossil fuel markets and in search for stable revenue streams, Marubeni and its rivals have been diversifying into the food business, where demand is set to grow alongside rising world population.
Mitsubishi owns Norway-based Cermaq, one of the world’s leading salmon farmers, and is also exploring salmon land farming in Japan, while Mitsui & Co is a shareholder of the world’s biggest shrimp farming and processing companies in Ecuador and Vietnam.
Mitsui expects profits in its lifestyle unit, which includes food, to exceed those earned by chemicals this fiscal year.
Trading houses are also exposed to convenience stores, with Itochu owning second-ranked FamilyMart and Mitsubishi co-owning third-ranked Lawson.
Their diversified profiles have caught an eye of U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett whose Berkshire Hathaway has this year raised its stake in the five biggest Japanese trading houses to around 9%.
($1 = 151.8900 yen)
(Reporting by Katya Golubkova; Additional reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
