Pollock miners estimate $400 million in losses due to China's port closures China 's

In 2021, restrictions on the supply of Russian fish to CHINA cost Russian pollock fishing companies about $400 million in losses. Such estimates were provided to RBC by the Association of Pollock Fishers (it includes 35 fishing enterprises, which account for more than 45% of the total catch of all types of aquatic biological resources in RUSSIA, as well as 78% of the pollock catch in Russia and about 41% of the world catch of this type of fish). 

Restrictions on imports to China for Russian fishermen have been in effect for more than a year: in October 2020, China began to close its ports for Russian products after traces of covid-19 were found on the packaging of fish coming from Russia . The last port of Dalian closed in December 2020.

At the end of 2020, the Chinese authorities were asked by the presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev to lift restrictions on the supply of fish from Russia. Negotiations went on throughout 2021, but there was no final clarity on when Chinese ports could open: at the end of September, the HEAD of the Federal Agency for Fishery, Ilya Shestakov, said that the transshipment of fish to China in bulk "will not open either in the coming months or in the next year, but possibly that and never.

But in early January 2022, China unexpectedly resumed receiving Russian fish in its ports of Dalian and Qingdao. The first Russian vessel with more than 7,000 tons of fish products, according to the Federal Agency for Fisheries, entered the port of Dalian on January 16.