Norway’s market share of salmon exports to China plummeted from 92 per cent in 2010 to 29 per cent in the first half of this year, with both the Faroe Islands and UK overtaking it in sales.
Experts say the decline was caused by the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in October 2010 to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a jailed Chinese dissident.
“It is no secret that declining sales in China are connected to the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a difficult political situation between Norway and China, and not something that can be solved by the industry,” Alf-Helge Aarskog, the chief executive of Marine Harvest, one of the world’s biggest salmon farmers, told a Norwegian newspaper.