Salmon story · Trade

Where does the salmon in Brazil come from?

Probably from Chile. In 2025, 100% of the fresh salmon that salmon-producing countries shipped to Brazil came from Chile. No other producer sent any.

Chile is about 3,100 km from Brazil, centre to centre.

Guess for another country

Fresh salmon shipped to Brazil, 2025, by producer

FromTonnesShareExport price, $/kgDistance, km
Chile117,123100%6.753,100

Tonnes and export prices as each producer declared them for 2025. Price is at the producer’s border, before freight.

Norway leads almost everywhere

Of the 71 countries that received at least 100 tonnes, Norway was the biggest supplier in 55. Chile led in 11, including the United States, Brazil and Argentina. The exceptions: Australia in Indonesia, India and New Zealand, the United States in Canada and New Zealand in Australia.

Altogether the ten producers shipped 1,938,547 tonnes of fresh salmon abroad in 2025. Norway sent 64%, Chile 16%, the United Kingdom 6% and the Faroe Islands 5%.

Why the map looks like this

Fresh salmon has to travel fast, so each producing region has mostly built up markets near home, says Mowi’s salmon farming handbook: Norway sells mainly to Europe and Asia, Chile to the US, South America and Asia, Canada to the US. Crossing the Atlantic means paying for air freight; for Chilean fillets flown to Miami, the handbook allows $1.40 to $1.60 a kilo. Asia is shared between producers, because getting there costs about the same from all of them.

How we know

Nobody tracks a fish from farm to plate. Customs offices record shipments as they cross a border. So we took the export records of the ten countries that farm or catch the salmon they sell, from UN Comtrade, and added up where their fresh salmon went: whole fish and fillets, Atlantic and Pacific. “Probably Norway” means that of the fresh salmon those countries sent to yours, the biggest share came from Norway.

We left out countries that pass salmon on. In 2025 Sweden reported importing 503,000 tonnes of fresh whole salmon from Norway, while Norway reported sending Sweden 18,700 tonnes. Norway counts exports by the last known country the goods are meant for, so almost all of it was only passing through Sweden on its way somewhere else. Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands also ship fresh salmon and fillets abroad, after buying much of it from Norway. Counting them would credit the stopover, not the farm. The flip side: in countries that buy from those hubs, like Germany, the real total is bigger than shown here.

Where Norway’s salmon goes after Poland

What this can’t tell you

These are odds, not a trace. A restaurant may buy from a wholesaler who imports from somewhere else, and one year’s trade can shift the next.

Only fresh or chilled salmon counts here. Frozen and smoked salmon travel on other routes. Trout isn’t counted either, even where it’s sold as salmon.

Almost all of it is farmed Atlantic salmon. In 2025 about 1% was Pacific salmon: wild-caught from the United States, farmed king salmon from New Zealand, and smaller amounts from Canada and Chile.

Every country

Sources

UN Comtrade, 2025, exports of fresh or chilled salmon (HS 030213, 030214, 030441) reported by Norway, Chile, the UK, the Faroe Islands, Canada, Iceland, the US, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. Net weight in tonnes and export value in US dollars as each producer declares it (free on board, so before freight). The US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand publish domestic exports separately, and we use those, so re-exports aren’t counted. Comtrade lists Taiwan as “Other Asia, nes”. Distances are between country centres, rounded to 100 km.

Download the data (JSON) · Another story: wild vs farmed salmon