How a Sardine Gets From the Ocean to a Can

Morocco exports approximately 50% of the world's sardine supply and imposed a ban on frozen sardine exports beginning in 2023, when its catch declined roughly 46 percent. The ban exempts canned sardine exports, protecting Morocco's domestic canning industry while significantly disrupting European producers that historically sourced up to 90% of their raw material from Morocco. Climate change and warming mid-Atlantic waters are considered the most likely driver of the decline, with sardines migrating to colder, less commercially accessible waters. Compounding factors include warmer water activating more tuna predators in the region and producing less nutrient-dense plankton, resulting in leaner sardines that are less commercially desirable. Fisheries science moves slowly and formal assessments take years, so isolating the dominant cause remains difficult. Despite the decline, the Moroccan fishery currently holds a yellow rating from Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, indicating it is considered well-regulated with strong enforcement.

Fishwife was founded by Becca Milstein after she encountered high-quality tinned fish culture while studying abroad in Spain and traveling in Portugal. She had no prior fish industry experience and spent roughly four years in entertainment before starting the company. American co-manufacturers questioned the viability of canned fish and recommended pouches instead, which was then a growing category. The canned fish category was flat or in decline at launch, which had the practical benefit of reducing competition for co-manufacturer line time. The COVID-19 pandemic drove approximately 10 percent year-over-year category growth and normalized sharing home meal photos featuring tinned fish on social media, both of which benefited Fishwife directly.

Fishwife has been operating for five and a half years and had 18 employees at the time of the interview. Its first year of real operations was 2021, working with micro canneries in Oregon and Washington with no minimum order quantities. The first Spanish cannery it worked with required a minimum order of roughly 20,000 units, and that initial sardine order lasted about one year. The company went out of stock on two products for three months during that first year yet still secured significant press and influencer coverage. By 2023 Fishwife shifted its supply chain strategy toward canneries capable of producing 80 to 100 million cans per year to support essentially unlimited scale in the American market.

European cannery partners are typically multi-generational family-owned businesses that consider 5 percent annual growth exceptional and flat growth acceptable. Fishwife's volume requests have tripled and quadrupled year-over-year, creating a meaningful mismatch in growth expectations. European canneries were attracted to the partnership because the US is a large, affluent market that is difficult to enter independently, and most had unused production capacity, operating at one to two shifts per day rather than full capacity.

Fishwife's Cantabrian anchovies come from Santonia in northern Spain. After catch, anchovies are headed, tailed, packed in rock salt, and cured for 12 to 36 months, with Fishwife's averaging 12 to 18 months. Longer curing produces higher quality but a more expensive and limited-market product. Because anchovies are cured through salt rather than heat, they are more sensitive than other tinned fish, carry a shelf life of roughly one year compared to five to seven years for most tinned fish, and can disintegrate if exposed to heat during storage or shipping.

Fishwife has sourced from the MSC-certified Cornish sardine fishery in Cornwall for approximately five years and added the Iberian sardine fishery after it received MSC certification roughly one year before the recording. It has never sourced from the Moroccan fishery. Sardine sales velocity increased two to three times starting around December of the prior year and later rose to four to five times prior levels, driven by a simultaneous social media and health trend coinciding with the supply shortage. To meet retailer demand Fishwife chose to air freight sardines despite significant gross margin compression, departing from its usual ocean freight method, which is both cheaper and more environmentally sustainable. Sardine prices are expected to rise further due to growing competition between the two fisheries Fishwife currently sources from.

DTC represents approximately 20 percent of Fishwife's business, with retail being the primary volume channel. Milstein described the company's model as inventing a new premium category rather than commoditizing an existing expensive product. She cited, with acknowledged uncertainty on the exact figures, that roughly 50 percent of current consumer spending is concentrated among approximately 5 percent of the population, which she used to support the case for demand in the premium segment. Most US canneries shut down approximately 15 years ago due to FDA regulations, fishery declines, and cheap Asian processing competition, leaving approximately five canneries in the lower 48 states today.