Will Christmas oysters save the 2020 season despite the Covid?
Audio 01:58
Out of a harvest of 110,000 tonnes of oysters in 2020, 10 to 15,000 tonnes remained in the parks.
Getty Images - Paolo Cirmia
By: Claire Fages Follow
5 mins
In France, the oyster industry has suffered from the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 epidemic.
Restaurants remain closed for the holidays.
But producers are relying more than ever on end-of-year meals to save the 2020 oyster season.
Publicity
The Christmas period will be more crucial than ever for oyster farmers in France, at the end of a very complicated year.
Out of a harvest of 110,000 tonnes of oysters in 2020, 10 to 15,000 tonnes remained in the parks.
Two outlets were lacking in the sector: restaurants, which generally sell 15% of French production;
and exports, which account for 25%, have been thwarted by the closure of borders and the vagaries of air freight, oysters traveling in the hold, on passenger flights.
The markets of Italy, the number one destination for French oysters, and China, Hong Kong and Singapore, the second destination, have collapsed.
Two-thirds of sales during the holidays
The profession hopes to make up some of the shortfall with the holidays.
This is the key period for oyster farmers who sell two-thirds of their oysters during the last fortnight of December.
So of course the restaurants will remain closed for Christmas and New Years, but the sector has reorganized to sell more in the markets, in the car parks of department stores and to fishmongers, who are also working very well at the moment, they are now the only customers of the Paris-Rungis market.
Good sign
: the fishmongers are overwhelmed
Will this compensate for the losses of the previous months?
Philippe le Gal, oyster farmer and president of the Center national de la conchyliculture (CNC), believes in it.
In view of the polls he has carried out, he observes that “
people will consume at home for the holidays.
Meals in small groups, but several meals, especially since the weekend lasts four days.
Obviously, they mustn't forget to buy oysters…
”.
Planes to export oysters at Christmas
Exports were able to resume for the holidays.
State services were working this weekend to issue veterinary certificates the day before planes take off.
Christmas expeditions should therefore be saved.
There is still some uncertainty over those of the New Year. They will depend on the maintenance of flights to Asia but also to Ukraine and Belarus, which indirectly supply the Russian market with French oysters, which is still closed to European agricultural products.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Economy