Of all the categories of seafood impacted by COVID-19 – both positively and negatively – mollusks appear to have borne the brunt of foodservice closures. The sector experienced a 60 percent decline in sales during the height of the pandemic last spring.
The mollusk market has also had one of the slowest recoveries, according to NPD Supplytrack data shared during a National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference webinar. SeafoodSource is providing exclusive coverage of the GSMC webinar series, which will be providing market-focused content throughout 2021.
NPD data has shown that while categories like crustaceans and freshwater fish have seen 90 to 92 percent recoveries from their initial declines, the market for mollusks remains just 77 percent of what it was before the pandemic hit…