News & Views
Ukrainian fish farmers sustain huge damages

Ukraine’s fish business suffered confirmed losses of US$47 million due to the Russian invasion, said Vitaliy Holovnia, deputy minister of agriculture and food in Ukraine, citing a study conducted by the Ukrainian government in cooperation with the UN. 

“We have losses of $21.6 million in aquaculture and $25.4 million in industrial fishing. These are data for Nov. 1, 2022,” Holovnia said, adding that those are preliminary figures, and the authorities have no doubts they will skyrocket when the hostilities are over, and making proper calculations will become possible. 

Ukraine’s fishing sector saw a 70 per cent drop in output due to the invasion, Holovnia said, not providing any additional information about the scale of damages in the fish farming industry. 

As of early 2022, nearly 150 fish farms were registered in Ukraine. More than 85 per cent of them were classical pond fishing facilities, primarily breeding carp. 

There are several confirmed casualties in the Ukrainian fish farming industry. Donetsk fish factory, one of Ukraine’s largest fish farming companies, reportedly lost 80 per cent of production capacities due to hostilities in the region. The Kharkiv-based Pecheneg fish farm, another industrial fish farm used to breed catfish, pike perch, silver carp, pike, grass carp, and crucian carp, has been completely destroyed. Several smaller farms have reportedly ceased to exist in Kyiv and Kherson regions. 

In recent months, Ukrainian RAS farms and hatcheries have also been suffering from repeated power outages. 

Ukraine’s state energy company Ukrenergo use scheduled and emergency outages to compensate for the impact of the Russian repeated missile strikes. The power outages hamper the operation of food manufacturers across the country, resulting in lower production and higher prices, the Ukrainian authorities warned. Currently, fish companies struggle to establish backup power generation sources using diesel generators.