Norway’s Fisheries and Ocean Policy Minister Marianne Sivertsen Naess visited Beijing on Sunday. She attended a launch event for a seafood cooperation project with Alibaba’s Freshippo supermarket chain. At the event, she pledged to further strengthen seafood trade cooperation with China.
Naess said she is pleased with Chinese consumers’ growing appetite for Norwegian seafood. She highlighted its health benefits, sustainable production and origin in Norway’s cold, clear waters. She also noted that Norwegian and Chinese authorities are working together to make seafood trade more efficient.
Norway is the world’s largest producer of Atlantic salmon by output. According to the Norwegian Seafood Council, China has risen from Norway’s sixth-largest seafood export market in 2024 to the third largest in 2025. It is the fastest-growing country among Norway’s top ten seafood export destinations.
Salmon remains Norway’s top seafood export to China. In the first eight months of 2025, Norway exported more than 61,300 metric tons of salmon to China, up 120 percent year-on-year. The export value reached 5.4 billion NOK, about 549 million $, an increase of 66 percent from the same period in 2024.
Over the same period, total Norwegian seafood exports to China reached 8 billion NOK. This was 43 percent higher than a year earlier, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council.
