A panel of financial experts, speaking during the 2026 Seafood Expo North America, said economic changes over the past three years have had a lasting impact on the seafood industry as it has navigated the ups and downs of the post-pandemic period.
“Two or three years ago, we were coming off 2022 and 2023, when there were a lot of clients who had some significant inventory adjustments,” John Doucette, a managing director with Rockland Trust, said. “It starts with Covid, where companies thought the world was coming to an end, and they quickly pivoted to retail.”
Many of those companies ended up having great years, he said, but following that period, there was a rush to get products as the world began to return to normal. Cold storage was frequently difficult to get into, demurrage charges were backing up, and banks were beginning to pull back.
“They said, ‘Wait a minute. If crab can fall 60 percent in nine months, where are we with our advance rates?’” Doucette said.
Fast forward to 2026, and the seafood industry and supply chains have stabilized, with banks beginning to return to prior lending patterns.
“We’re seeing advance rates on receivables and inventory borrowing as aggressive as they’ve been in decades,” Doucette said.
Michael Richard, a senior vice president with Wells Fargo, said the state of the world has been rapidly changing and the financial markets have adapted to that variability.
“Our customers have done a really nice job at navigating and pivoting, and things keep coming at them [on] a daily basis, but most of our borrowers have been successful at navigating those challenges. They’re very nimble,” he said, adding that as the seafood industry stabilizes, companies may begin thinking about how a merger or an acquisition could further advance their business.
Jason Brantly, a senior vice president with Columbia Bank, said the overall trend for the industry is a lower cost for capital, which should support more merger and acquisition activity; however, he cautioned that merger just for the sake of it is not necessarily a solution for everyone.
“Consolidation for its own sake doesn’t make sense,” Brantly said. “Two bad companies put together isn’t a win. Whether that’s in seafood or anything else, I think that’s really the key.”
Doucette said some acquisitions will likely come through the pipeline as a means of securing the future of a family-owned company where leadership is nearing retirement.
“There are a lot of folks, especially in the Northeast, that are at the age that they’re saying, ‘Hey, we have to start about a little bit of succession,’” Doucette said.
Doucette cautioned those companies to make sure that any deal they achieve allows them either autonomy or enough benefits that they can step away. One common trend he said he’s seen is companies doing partial acquisitions so that the leadership still has a presence.
“Folks are looking to take a little bit of money of the table, but they don’t want to retire,” he said. “They’ll go crazy if the play golf four times a week, so they’ll have someone acquire 70 percent of the company so management still has some money on the table, and they figure 30 percent of a larger company is better than selling the whole thing.”
Richard said his company initially thought the pace of acquisitions would pick up in 2026 but the current geopolitical situation has slowed things down. Despite that, there are still deals on the table.
“Long term, we remain supportive and excited about the potential to support consolidation in this industry, we think it’s super important to attain scale in this industry,” he said.