The Seafood Global Congress hopes to repeat the 35,000 visitors from 2024 this year.
For the fourth consecutive year, Barcelona hosts the world's largest gathering of seafood companies.
BarcelonaThe Seafood Global congress of seafood products and companies, which will be held next month at the Fira de Barcelona, hopes to repeat, at least, results similar to those of the last edition, when it brought together some 35,000 visitors and had an economic impact of €156 million, as explained this Thursday by Wynter Courmont, vice president of Diversified, the American company organizing the event.
Although registration is still open and Diversified has not definitively finalized the number of participating companies, Courmont has confirmed that, so far, 2,041 exhibiting companies from 84 different countries have already registered. Sixty-five national and regional pavilions have also been confirmed. In total, more than 51,000 square meters of net exhibition space have already been contracted, very close to last year's 51,200. Considering that Seafood Global will take place between May 6 and 8, these figures suggest participation at least similar to that of the 2024 edition, which in that case took place at the end of April.
The congress is the world's largest gathering of the fishing and seafood sector, which explains the markedly "international" nature of the participants, Courmont recalled. The exhibition is divided into two parts: the larger one is Seafood Global Expo, which features suppliers of fresh, packaged, and frozen fish and seafood, while the other branch of the event, called Seafood Processing Global, features seafood processing and service companies in the maritime industry.
Regarding the impact of tariffs on the seafood sector, the organization's representative said that we are still "in the early days" of the trade war, which is "constantly changing," but she assured that the congress will be "an opportunity to discuss the global challenges and solutions" facing the industry.
Courmont has not given a figure on the economic impact that the congress will have this year because registration has not yet closed, but in 2024 it was around 156 million euros, according to the organizers' own calculations, which take into account the impact of the congress itself on hiring local companies as well as spending.
Fourth edition in Barcelona
This edition will be the fourth that the event takes place in Barcelona, where it arrived in 2021 after years of being held in BrusselsCourmont reiterated, as he had done in previous years, that the organizers are "very happy" to have moved the exhibition to the Catalan capital. For his part, Rubén Dalmau, commercial director of Fira de Barcelona, described Seafood Global as "one of the leading international events on the Fira calendar," which in four years "has not stopped growing."
