In recent years, aquaculture in Russia has been perceived as one of the most resilient segments of the fisheries industry. After a decade of steady growth, production exceeded 400 thousand tonnes in 2023. However, in 2024 the trend shifted, with output declining to 380 thousand tonnes.

Preliminary data for last year, announced by the Head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries, Ilya Shestakov, at an extended meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Agrarian and Food Policy and Environmental Management, indicate a return of annual aquaculture production to around 400 thousand tonnes.

Formally, this is stabilization. In reality, it marks a transition to a new stage of development.

After growth comes management

For a long time, the industry expanded “by inertia”: increasing the number of farms, expanding cage farming capacity, and boosting production volumes of trout and salmon. However, the decline in 2024 demonstrated that the extensive growth model has begun to encounter its limits.

The reasons lie in several areas:
• rising costs of feed and imported components;
• currency fluctuations;
• logistical constraints;
• saturation of certain regional markets.

This is not a crisis, but a signal: further growth is impossible without improved efficiency.

0.4 million tonnes — a lot or a little?

Compared to total wild catch (~4.8 million tonnes), aquaculture still accounts for only about 8–9%.

By comparison, aquaculture already provides more than half of global fish and seafood production, and in China it accounts for approximately 80–83% of total output.

This means that in Russia, aquaculture remains one of the most underutilized growth reserves within the fisheries sector. Unlocking this significant potential depends less on expanding production areas and more on:
• technological capacity of aquaculture farms;
• continued localization of feed production;
• stable supply of high-quality juveniles;
• development of processing and market promotion.

A shift in logic: from volume to margin

By 2025, a new market logic had already begun to take shape, in which aquaculture is no longer merely an alternative to wild capture. It is a tool for stabilizing supply, opening access for central Russian markets to a greater volume of chilled fish products and creating conditions for increased domestic consumption.

This is where the key opportunity lies: the controllability of production enables long-term contracts, better logistics planning, and reduced price volatility.

The bottleneck is not biology, but economics

While the biological potential for aquaculture remains high, project profitability is increasingly dependent on feed costs, logistics, and distribution channels. As a result, the key challenge in the coming years will be economic viability.

At the current production level of around 400 thousand tonnes, further growth will only be possible through deeper processing, expansion of sales geography, and integration with retail and HoReCa channels. Without this, the sector risks being trapped in a corridor of stagnation.

What comes next?

If 2023 marked the peak of growth and 2024 a year of correction, then 2025 can be seen as a point of reassessment.

The question is no longer how many tonnes to produce, but which model to scale.

Aquaculture has the potential to become a driver of structural transformation across the entire fisheries industry—but only if it shifts from a volume-driven approach to one focused on value creation.

This transition will determine whether the segment can outpace the broader market—or remain in its shadow.

It is therefore no coincidence that the concept behind the AQUA FARM GLOBAL special exposition combines practical aspects of fish and seafood farming with efficient production and market продвижение of aquaculture products.