About a Fifth of Choshi's Seafood Processors Have Failed or Effectively Closed — Imported Mackerel Cost 2.6 Times More per Kilo Than a Decade Ago, and Domestic Landings Fell 46.9%

Year	Volume (000 t)	Value (¥100m)	Unit (¥/kg)
2015	73	149	204
2023	77	260	338
2024	68	265	390
2025	61	319	523

2024 to 2025

Volume −10.1% / Value +20.3%

Less bought, more paid

The domestic alternative: mackerel landings

482,000 t (2014) to 256,000 t (2024), down 46.9%

Landing price ¥80/kg (2015) to ¥147/kg (2025), up 84.3%

Unit prices are value divided by volume. Volume is measured by the form in which goods clear customs, so a change of pack changes the unit price. Switching to domestic supply does not resolve the problem, because domestic landings fell by nearly half over the same decade.

On 8 August 2026, NHK reported on Choshi, Chiba Prefecture. The opening line reads that "as the price of imported mackerel, mainly from Norway, which accounts for most of their raw material, has climbed, the margins of seafood processors have deteriorated and about a fifth are bankrupt or effectively closed."

The scale of processing in Choshi appears in the city's own material. There are 79 seafood processing establishments, 1,743 workers and 61,783,060,000 yen in manufacturing shipments[1], about 61.8 billion yen.

That 61.8 billion is about 38% of the city's total industrial output of 160.8 billion yen, with soy sauce brewing and related production at about 48%[2]. Close to four-tenths of the city's industry turns on the price of an imported input.

Imported mackerel cost 2.56 times more per kilo than a decade ago

Start with the price of the input. The reference materials to the white paper carry import volumes and values by item, drawn from the customs statistics.

The mackerel row runs as follows. 2015: 73,000 tonnes and 14.9 billion yen. 2023: 77,000 tonnes and 26.0 billion yen. 2024: 68,000 tonnes and 26.5 billion yen. 2025: 61,000 tonnes and 31.9 billion yen[3].

Divide value by volume and the unit price follows: 204 yen per kilo, 338, 390, 523. 2.56 times in ten years.

Less bought, more paid

Take one year and the direction is unmistakable. Between 2024 and 2025, volume fell 10.1% and value rose 20.3%[4].

Less material bought, more money paid. Processing buys an input, works it and sells it. If the rise in the input price cannot be passed into the sale price, margin goes.

The domestic alternative shrank too

So switch to domestic supply? That route is closing.

Marine landings of mackerel fell from 482,000 tonnes in 2014 to 256,000 tonnes in 2024, down 46.9%[5]. Close to half in a decade.

The price rose as well. The landing price for mackerel rose from 80 yen per kilo in 2015 to 147 yen in 2025, up 84.3%[6]. The white paper states that mackerel and similar species, hit by continued poor catches on the Pacific side, have held at high prices[7].

Imports and domestic supply both shrank in volume and rose in price. There is no move from the expensive one to the cheap one.

Mackerel is 5.2% of what Choshi lands

Look at the port itself. In the 2024 rankings of major fishing ports, Choshi was second by volume at 146,548 tonnes and seventh by value at 19.417 billion yen[8]. First by volume was Kushiro at 173,659 tonnes[8].

The composition is lopsided. Sardine accounts for 82.4% of landed volume and mackerel for 5.2%, about 88% between them. By value, sardine is 57.0% and mackerel 7.0%, about 64%[9].

5.2% of 146,548 tonnes is roughly 7,600 tonnes, an eighth of the 61,000 tonnes imported nationally. Beside the second-largest port in the country, processors are failing over the price of an imported input.

The fish landed and the fish processed are different

This is the centre of it. Eight-tenths of what Choshi lands is sardine; mackerel is a twentieth. The processing side, in NHK's phrasing, runs on "imported mackerel, mainly from Norway, which accounts for most of their raw material."

A port and a factory can sit in the same town and handle different fish. Being among the largest ports in Japan by volume does nothing to secure the factories' inputs.

The sardine has its own split. 36% of landed sardine goes to food use as fresh fish, surimi products, paste and canned goods; the remaining 64% goes to aquaculture or fishing bait[10]. Most of what is landed never becomes something a person eats.

The plant count has been falling for fifteen years

These closures did not begin this year.

Cold storage plants fell from 104 in 2008 to 88 in 2013, 69 in 2018 and 52 in 2023[11]. Exactly half in fifteen years. Daily freezing capacity fell from 3,639 tonnes to 2,951, and refrigerated capacity from 204,305 tonnes to 162,720[11].

Ice followed the same line. Ice plants fell from 8 to 4, and daily ice capacity from 795 tonnes to 583[12].

Canning went earlier. Establishments canning or bottling seafood fell from 4 in the city in 2001 to 2 in 2014[13].

Workers and shipments fell at the same rate

Set the establishment figures alongside. Seafood processing establishments with four or more workers went from 74 establishments, 2,008 workers and 71.2 billion yen in shipments in 2018 to 79 establishments, 1,743 workers and 61.8 billion yen in 2022[14].

Establishments rose from 74 to 79, but workers fell 13.2% and shipments 13.3%. The count went up while the contents shrank at the same rate. Workers per establishment went from 27.1 in 2018 to 22.1 in 2022.

The sector came through by shrinking each unit while holding the count, and then the input price rose. The figure of about a fifth is what landed on top of an already thin position.

Following a trend of this kind means putting establishments, workers and shipments in one table. The method is covered in a statistical literacy primer for arguing social problems with data（このサイトの記事）.

What the breakdown by segment shows

The 2022 breakdown shows where the workers are. Frozen seafood products account for 32 establishments and 755 workers, frozen seafood for 21 and 479, salted and dried goods for 13 and 118, surimi products for 4 and 117, canning and bottling for 2 and 187, seaweed processing for 2 and 24, and other seafood foodstuffs for 5 and 63[15].

The two frozen segments come to 53 establishments and 1,234 workers, 70.8% of the workforce. Freezing means buying material, freezing it and shipping it, so material cost carries a heavy share. The workforce is concentrated where a price rise bites first.

The city's material also sets out where the mackerel goes. Dried, filleted, split-dried and cut forms sell mainly in the Kanto region, while salted mackerel sells largely to the Kansai region including Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. In recent years mackerel has been exported to Africa including Egypt, and to Russia, East Asia and Southeast Asia[2].

What is happening on the population side

The industrial contraction runs alongside movement of people. Choshi's population fell from 82,180 in 1995 to 58,431 in 2020[16], down 28.9% over 25 years, and stood at 53,509 as of 1 April 2025[17].

In 2024 there were 126 births against 997 deaths, and 1,635 people moved in against 1,802 who moved out[18]. A natural decline of 871 and a net outflow of 167 in one year. Those aged 65 and over make up 37.7% of the population[19].

The 1,743 workers in seafood processing are 6.2% of the 27,946 employed residents aged 15 and over[19]. Losing a fifth of them works out at roughly 350 jobs.

What regional policy can do for an industry that cannot set its input price

The price of imported mackerel is set by Norwegian quotas, exchange rates and freight. No processor in Choshi is party to that negotiation. An industry that cannot set its own input cost accounts for close to four-tenths of the city's industrial output.

The labour crisis in fishing（このサイトの記事） covered the catching side. This is the processing side, and the input is not a domestic catch but an import. Within the same word, "fisheries," the blockage sits somewhere else.

As 3.456 million consultations over ten years of support for the needy（このサイトの記事） shows, whether someone who loses a job reaches support is a separate question. Even among those who reached a consultation, a continuing support plan was made for 26.6%.

What has to be counted before the next decision

The published figures track establishments, workers and shipments. All are annual, and 2022 is the latest. When and where the "about a fifth" shows up in those series is something the next round of statistics will decide.

Some things are not tracked at all. How many people worked at the processors that closed, and how many of them found work again in the city. That number appears neither in the industrial statistics nor in the population statistics. The contraction is visible in the establishment count; where the people went is not.

Further Reading

• Nihon no Suisan Shigen Kanri (Fisheries Resource Management in Japan: The Real Causes of Decline and the Road Back)（外部サイト、新しいタブで開きます） by Ayumu Katano and Isao Sakaguchi (Keio University Press). Argues from the side of resource management why domestic catches fell. Useful for seeing, from the catching side, why switching from an expensive import to domestic supply is such a narrow path.

References

FY2025 White Paper on Fisheries, Reference Materials — Fisheries Agency (2026). Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

FY2025 White Paper on Fisheries, Chapter 2: Developments in Japan's Fishing Industry — Fisheries Agency (2026). Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

Choshi Fisheries (April 2025) — Choshi City Fisheries Division (2025). Choshi City

Chiba, Choshi: About a Fifth of Processors Bankrupt or Closed as Imported Mackerel Prices Climb — NHK (2026). NHK NEWS WEB