This report is an updated version of a report published by Matís in 2020, originally commissioned by Seafish and the Grimsby Seafood Cluster in the UK, with the aim of providing a comprehensive understanding of the ownership connections and dependencies among the largest seafood companies in Iceland, and how these may potentially affect supply to the UK.
The Icelandic seafood industry has been characterised by consolidation and optimisation since 1991, when the government introduced the Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) system across all species. This allowed companies to purchase quotas from others and harvest them in a manner that, in theory, ought to be more economically efficient. The underlying principle is that the overall economic return from the resource will be maximised by permitting such optimisation. Now, thirty-five years later, the resulting economies of scale have led to extreme consolidation across the seafood sector, with smaller companies merging into larger ones or being acquired by the major vertically integrated seafood companies.
The catching and processing sectors have undergone a significant development phase in recent years, as vessels and processing technologies have advanced considerably in efficiency. This advancement, however, carries a price tag that only larger companies can afford, which has in turn accelerated consolidation. By way of illustration, in 1991 the ten largest companies owned 24% of the overall quota in cod-equivalent; they now hold 57.7%, while the twenty largest companies account for 76.8%.
In order to maintain diversity in the industry and to prevent a scenario in which only a handful of companies possess the entire quota, the government imposed a cap — referred to as the quota ceiling — on the proportion of the overall quota that any individual company may hold. For the main ITQ system, this cap is set at 12% in cod-equivalent, and for the coastal fleet (vessels below 15 metres) the ceiling is set at 5%. Under current legislation, however, a significant loophole exists: if a company holds a stake of less than 50% in another firm, that firm’s quota holdings do not count towards the quota ceiling. As a result, many of the larger companies have established cross-ownership arrangements that lack full transparency. Clusters of interconnected companies have consequently emerged, with varying degrees of mutual dependency.
The government has, over the past decade, attempted to address the issues of cross-ownership and transparency, with limited success. The most recent effort is a draft bill submitted by the Ministry of Fisheries for public consultation in the spring of 2025, proposing that a 20% cross-ownership threshold would establish the basis for counting companies’ quota shares collectively towards the 12% quota ceiling. The draft bill received substantial criticism and has not advanced further. This report provides a brief overview of cross-ownership and dependencies among the largest seafood companies in Iceland and examines how these may affect supply to the UK, with particular reference to supplies of fresh whole fish sourced by the Humber processing industry.