Caviar para todos, para o povo...

Caviar Migrates Beyond the Caspian Region

By RAPHAEL MINDER (NYT)

As new farms ramp up in countries as divergent as China, Spain and the United Arab Emirates, they hope to change the dynamics of caviar, popularizing the product while expanding production and sales.

The New York Times, 16/12/2011

Caviar Migrates Beyond the Caspian Region

Laura Leon for The International Herald Tribune

A worker lifts a sturgeon from a pond at a fish farm in Riofrío, Spain. Riofrío raises the Acipenser naccarii species of sturgeon, which is native to the Mediterranean.

By RAPHAEL MINDER

Published: December 16, 2011

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RIOFRÍO, Spain — Caviar might be perceived as one of the world’s most exclusive products, but its production is expanding far and fast.

In countries as divergent as China, Finland, Spain and the United Arab Emirates, new sturgeon farms are starting to fill the void left by the depleted stock of wild beluga and other species of sturgeon from the Caspian Sea, the traditional source of caviar.

As the new farms emerge, they hope to change the dynamics of caviar, popularizing the product while at the same time expanding production and sales.

First, though, they will have to convince consumers that caviar produced somewhere other than the Caspian is not a luxury knockoff.

Unlike Champagne, caviar is not a brand name; in fact, many other types of fish eggs other than sturgeon are also sold as caviar. The luxury cachet has come in large part from Russian and Iranian caviar producers, who have successfully sold the image of black caviar from Caspian sturgeon as the only true product.

Despite the worldwide financial crisis, caviar is among a select group of luxury goods that has weathered the downturn in consumer spending, maintaining a wholesale price of about 1,000 euros a kilogram ($590 a pound) for most varieties.

That golden market niche, however, has been shriveling. The sturgeon population in the lower Volga River — which empties into the Caspian Sea and used to be the world’s chief source of black caviar — has plunged 99 percent in the last 15 years, according to the Russian fisheries agency.

The drop, which began because of pollution and dam-building, has been accelerated by illegal fishing, Andrei Krainy, the head of the agency, told Interfax, the Russian news agency, last August.

The Russian government banned black caviar exports in 2002 to comply with international fisheries agreements aimed at protecting endangered species. It reopened the exports earlier this year, although from farm fish that take years to reach maturity.

In the meantime, the new sturgeon farms are hoping to fill the gap, and then some.

There are no reliable statistics on worldwide production, but Patrick Williot, a French sturgeon researcher, estimated that annual caviar production now stood at about 250 tons — almost exclusively from farmed sturgeon — compared with 550 tons in the late 1970s. But “in contrast with the former production based on wild sturgeon populations, the present production is continuously increasing,” he said.

Seppo Kapanen is part of the transformation. Mr. Kapanen, the co-founder of Caviar Empirik, a Finnish company, runs two sturgeon farms in Finland and in October acquired a sturgeon farm in the Andalusia region of Spain.

“We’re now talking about being able to transform the market for one of the world’s greatest and most established luxury products,” he said. “There are plenty of very interesting investment opportunities.”

Mr. Kapanen said he decided to diversify into caviar production after making his money in activities like shipping and real estate. His company’s two farms in Finland, where caviar production is set to start next year, are backed by Russian investors. While he would not give details on his investments, Mr. Kapanen said he and his associates had already spent “many millions” on their caviar business.

Among other newcomers at the table is Royal Caviar, a company in Abu Dhabi that has been building an indoor caviar farm in the emirate at a cost of $120 million and using German technology. Production there is set to start next summer and reach 35 tons of caviar by 2015.

Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the European Union only in 2007, are using their access to the bloc’s agricultural subsidies to develop sturgeon farming. The two countries are also home to Europe’s only viable populations of wild sturgeon, although wildlife organizations have recently raised concerns about illegal fishing.

Looming even larger on the horizon is China, where farms have been starting in different corners of the country, including around the Yangtze River Basin as well as along the Heilongjiang River.

“Caviar production worldwide will surely double, if not triple, over the next decade,” said Diego Pozas, the director of Caviar de Riofrío, the Spanish company that operates Mr. Kapanen’s Andalusian farm. “Even the Chinese now have the potential to overtake everybody.”

After the Finnish takeover of the Andalusia farm, Mr. Pozas is transferring to another Spanish caviar venture, Caviar Persé, which is planning to start production next year in the northern region of Navarra. This farm, Mr. Pozas expects, will be Europe’s biggest after it reaches its full capacity of 25 tons of caviar per year.

“We’re very well placed for further growth in Spain,” Mr. Pozas said, “but it’s also getting much more competitive.”

Mr. Kapanen said that a surge in supply should start lowering prices for caviar in about two years, when more farms will reach full production capacity. He predicted that some brands of farmed caviar would end up costing about 600 euros a kilo, so that caviar would eventually come “close” to the price of smoked salmon, a more affordable delicacy.

This should not worry producers, he added, because “if people get used to eating caviar, they will want more of it and will also progressively want to switch from the cheaper versions to the more expensive.”

One of the enduring difficulties with caviar, which in part explains its high cost, is that it requires a long-term investment with no immediate return.

It takes about eight years for the sex of a sturgeon to become apparent and then another five for the female to reach ovulation and thereby be considered ready for what staff at Riofrío call “the sacrifice,” when the fish is killed and cut open to collect its eggs.

As the number of market entrants multiplies, Mr. Pozas said, producers could choose among several farming methods to differentiate themselves from the competition.

At its Andalusian farm, which stands next to a natural spring in an otherwise parched landscape better known for its olive trees, Riofrío raises the Acipenser naccarii species of sturgeon. The fish is native to the Mediterranean and used to be fished regularly along the Guadalquivir, which crosses Andalusia, until the fish’s migratory route got cut off by dams and other constructions along the river.

About 35,000 sturgeon swim in the pools at Riofrío’s Andalusian farm, a third of maximum capacity, to let the fish roam. The company also avoids using methods to speed up the fish’s development, like injecting additional oxygen or overfeeding.

“We’re putting strict environmental standards ahead of mass production,” Mr. Pozas said. “Obviously that’s not a choice that everybody will be making.”

Retailers of luxury foodstuff, meanwhile, recognize the challenge of persuading consumers that caviar produced elsewhere is still, well, caviar.

“The public in general thinks that sturgeons only come from the Caspian Sea and that what is produced in farms isn’t good or is somehow fake,” said Esperanza Monreal, who owns the Madrid franchise of Caviar House & Prunier, which sells caviar farmed in the Gironde region of France.

While some regular customers initially had their doubts about the quality of French caviar, she said, “they no longer have them because they have seen that caviar is neither better nor worse if it comes from the Caspian Sea.”